If I would have hired out all the labor, my guess would have be around 60-70 K in additional labor.

If I were to BnB out my room or any spare areas while I'm gone I could (hopefully) trust/pay my roomate/tenant to help or hire an independent cleaning service. 

You could be the guy who arranges the funds to buy the property and hires someone to rehab it, you could be the guy doing the rehab work, or the guy who finds the deal.

You can also, if you do it legitimately, hire your children (if you have any). 

An exterminator is fairly inexpensive to hire and then you wouldn't have these tenants setting traps (correctly or potentially incorrectly) and not address the issue properly.

Hi Red, Thank you for taking a look! 

Many solid and popular books about rental property investing have already been recommended here, so I'll suggest some less obvious reads...Liar's Poker (Michael Lewis) for pure entertainment and a primer on how Wall Street supports liquidity in the housing market.Home (Witold Rybczynski) to appreciate the many different ways people want to live inside their homes.What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow (Frank Gallinelli) to understand when and how to deploy key financial metrics to make better decisions.Handyman In-Your-Pocket (Richard Young & Thomas Glover) to be your own handyman and/or check up on contractors and subs you hire to work on your rentals.Have fun and don't forget that you'll learn more by doing your first actual deal than you will from all the books in the world.

You can't work on the property as it must be a passive investment (e.g. you must hire someone to fix the toilet and can't pay the expense with non-retirement funds).7.

Had a few were I let the attorney dictate when to hire the abstractor ( usually about a week before closing) only to find out title was buggered and i spent a few grand on plans and due diligence.. so learned my lesson there   

Due to that, there are a number of agents who hire their colleagues to represent them because of the liability involved.