He’s saying it’s checking with the city to check the code.

We found that Zillow will give us data broken down by zip code, but want something more granular, like rent and home sale value for certain parts of a town.

If you have done out of state investing how do you come up with your scope of work and verify that the work done by the contractor is good and meets all the local building code requirements? 

This is one of those questions that only you can answer.From strictly a rental property analysis standpoint, $2600/mi in potential gross income for $375k is roughly a 4% cap rate - That's not incredibly exciting, but also not terrible (it's also very market-specific...it would be great in some areas, terrible in others, and I know nothing about the Metairie LA market). 

I have no idea if they will really do that or how strictly they will interpret things if they do, we are in uncharted territory. 

You'll need to see the LA state property code.

Many states and municipalities are very strict that security deposits are only to be used for unpaid rent and actual damage to property.

The lenders I work with do strictly non-owner occupied loans and don't underwrite based on the financials of the buyer/owner. 

I was also told by a different agent that discussing other offers in this way was against their code of ethics?

So if you eliminate all of those properties that have old roofs, mold, settlement issues, outstanding code violations, and more of the why step in that - I'll call those "bad deals," you can get on with analyzing deals that are worth your time and possibly worth doing.