Pay to separately meter the utility.

I might be a little jaded after years of hearing unbelievable excuses for why tenants can't pay rent.

This is tricky because instead of talking with your tenants about their performance as tenants( pay on time, maintain the property, in good condition,ect) you are inquiring about their parenting or lack there of.

Quote from @Michael Calvey: Airbnb just dropped their Q4 numbers, and something caught my eye that hosts need to pay attention to: while they're raking in $2.5B in revenue (up 12%), they're dumping massive resources into platform "improvements" - 535 of them to be exact.As someone who follows the hosting space closely, here's what's interesting: they're clearly betting big on AI and tech upgrades, but what does this mean for hosts' bottom lines?

If it is 10 days, tell her you will pay for the hotel (you pick), but that's it. 

My suggestion would be to cap your utilities at a certain amount and have Tenants pay anything over that amount.That will help you manage your expenses, and also allow Tenants to gage their usage each month, and make adjustments if they don't want to go over the allotted amount.As far as collection, provide the bill showing any overages and just have them pay for it along with their rent. 

The seller is willing to negotiate price, but I have to pay for all repairs upfront.

Pay attention to what's going on in the RAL industry in your area.

So what you'll want to pay attention to is the total upfront costs and how that impacts your interest rate - I'd encourage you if your lender hasn't already to do a break-even calculation to determine based on your hold and strategy how much costs yield you a positive ROI. 

If you’re thinking about buying, selling, or investing, now’s the time to pay attention to these trends.