My parents are getting older and they don't have retirement plans or assets so I'd like to start earning more income to attain financial independence both for myself and for them.

There's a temptation to make up problems that really don't need fixing or to only identify problems that they're capable of fixing.Walking the property with a contractor pre-offer is great to get a general sense of what the property needs but the post-offer inspection is your independent assessment of what's needed to bring the property up to code.

Commercial Insurance contracts are fairly complex and thus I highly recommend using an independent insurance broker that represents multiple companies and writes a lot of commercial insurance.

Unless the building was purposely built with multiple units, it is quite unlikely each unit will have independent water service from the mechanical room or service line coming from the street.

And I'd be taking a big risk because I'd have to pay utilities (not wired independent) and with electric heat that could be huge in the winter here.Don't get me wrong - I didn't expect getting my first rental to be easy, but I thought I'd see at least something reasonable...

Create clear resolutions for each independent transaction specific to the particular property (as legally described) and the particular party the series is selling to or buying/borrowing from.  

You've already made good choices that I'm sure will open many doors and lead your family to financial independence.  

Money Mustach).Fast forward to now and I'm getting the REI bug, and have been looking around the BP blog posts and forums trying to get some ideas of what I might want to do next to move closer to financial Independence.

I worked for a state agency for a while and I know that most states are looking for independent contractors for group homes because outsourcing the responsibilities are more cost effective.

Foremost is sold by both Independent agencies as well as Farmers Insurance Agents (Farmers owns Foremost) - some think it's a differently priced policy under the independents but that isn't true they just don't know how to generate the proper rate and maximize the discounts.