Huntsville is in the top 5 of most intelligent cities, NASA & all the private engineers.Mobile had the BP oil spill that everyone thought would wreck the market but all of the clean up crews, FEMA, etc., were here pumping money in the local economy while the beach tourism was non existent during the spill & clean up. 

I want to be a buy and hold investor eventually, but I have some financial messes to clean up before I can move forward. 

Yeah, Larry Ellison buys Lanai, Obama's mansion and the sea wall, Zuckerberg's importing Kobe beef to his island estate & I can't have a gas generator 🙄  Tesla's driving around while during a lake Tahoe cleanup day we pulled 8k lbs of garbage outa the lake.

The rest of the country is tired of supplying resources to fight fires and cleanup after San Francisco. 

Adding $1,500 to our expenses, and depleting our savings account by a ridiculous amount is not the move right now.

I make a deal with them that if they are willing to finish the work agree to clean up and paint and get the place back to good condition I’ll accept only half the months security deposit to save them money and get it how they like it .

I was exploring San Antonio recently and trying to understand that market more as compared to Dallas Fort Worth where I see reduction in monthly cash flow and depleting overall returns as of now (tons of rental inventory there)

Words and definitions are important for you and the Tenant to understand.The problem here is that you charged a "pet cleaning fee" so that implies you are using it to clean up after the pet.

Using the rehab loan clean up the existing structure, and utilizing a portion of the foundation, add a modular or steel duplex over a basement thereby achieving 4 units and hopefully all in under 450k. 

I never had to replace the trash cart or clean up the yard or clean out the shared laundry area, etc. !