If you stay at your parents and just try to buy a pure rental, you will need 20-25% down payment which will add limitations to where you purchase.

Based purely on my experience working with investors. 

Am I correct that my LLC could partner with my SDIRA if it were a purely passive investment, like a turnkey property managed by pm that I put no sweat equity in?

I have pulled significant amount of equity out of pure buy and hold with no renovations as well, usually you just need to wait longer for the principal pay down and market appreciation to build up equity into the deal.

Sometimes that $500 you saved can cost you thousands when the city finds out and you have to rip it all down etcPeople always ***** that permits are purely a $$ grab by the city/government.....some are ridiculous..... but many are for your own safety and the smart way to do stuff.

I realize it's unpopular to factor in appreciation and even written off by many as pure speculation, but in my experience it's the biggest wealth builder of all.

NOPE...... clean it as best as absolutely possible..... this is a cosmetic issue, not a functional one.After a couple of months you still have very little knowledge about how good a tenant will be...ZERO.You will set the precedent of " I don't like this....replace or fix it"....... have fun with that..... this is a test....Even if you know its old and will need to be replaced soon anyway, I would typically stall to replace it if its purely cosmetic.

I live in a nice neighborhood and charge high rent, so the number works for me and I also don't intend to keep them as rental forever, most likely will renovate and sell sometime in the future.Owning pure rental properties especially ones targeted at lower-income tenants will just stress me out, not worth it, even though I know people who had done really well on the east coast follow that playbook...  

Many of the Midwest markets are good for pure cash flow / cash on cash returns. 

One will pay bills the other will be pure cash flow once I get reserves built back up.