After a few years we realized he had some mental illness so we tried to give him a break but that was totally the wrong thing to do.

Operating expenses can make or break a deal and they should be verified by the sponsor’s property management company (or multiple PMs).Example: We are currently underwriting to higher payroll costs.

The reason is that you need to have criteria for both of these, and you should never break those criteria; no matter what!

I’m disappointed they don’t include a more true break down of cost.

If your numbers get down in the 60k gross returns you would only be at break even.  

In our case, we made the effort because a) we're on our 7th property, b) we have sufficient reserves to weather ups and downs with the property c) we have an attorney we've previously worked with and trust to help us with the resident ejectment, d) the purchase price was low enough to give us sufficient room for error, e) we have contractors with whom we've worked who we believe can timely renovate the property and f) we were prepared to get it wrong and either lose money on this or sell the property at break-even, a small profit or a small loss. 

I don’t think ANYONE read the title of your post or even the body of it. 

If that’s the case, you might want to just do the turnkey route, because it will be way easier to break even on a 5% down payment than a 20-25% down payment.

It’s good advice but not practical as then no body needs any insurance.

Then there's the transactional (deal-making) and litigation (deal-breaking) dichotomy within each area.There are some basic vetting that apply to all industries and some thoughts that are applicable to only lawyers.