Landlords have a legal and moral obligation to maintain the property.

Seller maintained the property in very good condition during their 23 years of ownership.

I got some answers for you,#1 just buy the materials yourself, meet and maintain relationships with salesmans at supply houses.

We maintained management through the hold period, which included leasing commissions and management fees.

The kind of properties we're looking at for our first investment are all well-maintained houses in better neighborhoods that should be fine to finance with a loan, I should add.

Hello Isacc, Thank you and the property is well maintained.

If you have a good relationship with the seller and you do everything you have told them you would do, you maintain communication/updates on progress throughout the deal and you havent strong armed them into selling for next to nothing then they are much less likely to back out of the deal.

I just want to break even to add amentiy and maintainI have lots of workers who need work and want to clean/maintain laundry room so it would benefit my 'in house' maintenance people too. 

I then may need separate personal and business umbrella liability.The argument isn't that LLC hurt you, just that they cost money to setup and maintain through yearly filings and extra accounting effort. 

That is all your call.In my leases it is the tenant's responsibility to maintain the yard.