The other property, I just found out that the city gave a warning, a violation where the paint was cracking on the exterior. 

I will warn you, it is a lot of hoops to jump through.

Make sure you have documentation about the dog bite-hope the tenant wasn't hurt too badly....Just a suggestion-I warn my new tenants with dogs that if I receive complaints they do not clean up after their dogs that I would hire a poop-duty company and charge them for it.

Not happy that there wasn’t a warning!

(Warning, of course, the reverse happens when rent deflates. 

Even more so for newer investors for several reasons.I will warn you though that with vacant houses in particular, I would not rely on just mail to contact the owners.  

I don’t know anything about them except this: if they are associated with Morris then I am going to stay far away from anything they do, anything they sell.I will leave you with one idiom, the ultimate and timeless warning in literally all aspects of every business – yet something we all forget from time to time.

Some are warning about the owner occupied FHA route however if that is the problem there is still the HomeStyle Renovation option.

I recently decided to become involved with real-estate investing, but before I do anything else I'd like to become knowledgeable on the subject. I've read several books/ blogs and the majority of these suggest the bes...

Any pitfalls in the buy and hold game you can warn me of?