The biggest thing that I can say is just act professional. 

I guess my biggest concern is that if I keep investing in index funds I might not be in a good position to liquidate and have money for the down payment.

Communication skills are the number one differentiator.One of the biggest challenges contractors face is managing client expectations - investors and homeowners alike can sometimes be impossible to please and often not because they are unreasonable people, just because they don't understand.And even nice people take a lot of energy to manage - and that is on top of managing the job.

-While not official, it does SEEM that one of the biggest changes to the May update was using text analysis to affect ranking.

The biggest costs are going to come from turnovers.

That's why the biggest return is always from the highest appreciating town/city/state.

If the power and water are the same utility (jacksonville), I generally find when the units are built with both.I have looked into retrofitting a number of times and the numbers have never played out.The two biggest electric uses are Heat/ac and the water heater.  

That gives us a buffer of 10 years on some of the biggest items.

However the biggest thing to note there is that the sponsor controls when that refi happens, not the investor.

The biggest expense you'll find on there is insurance.