some places need a rental license with the city, ensures everything is up to code. I had to do this for a previous rental. my current stock does not require one. Register an LLC per property. Mine are all 123 1st ave llc ( whatever the address is) and get an ein for each and have a bank account and credit card for each. this makes tracking your expenses very easy and if you need to get work done its easy to charge. Wells fargo if you open a CC on a business account right now and spend 3k on it the first 3 months, you get 500 credit. not a bad deal. then you can also charge a tank of gas every once in a while and stuff like that to go against your profit. You want to break even or loose a little every year for taxes. also have at least a 1 million dollar umbrella policy, usually only a few hundred per year when added to your current insurance provider. landlord insurance is much cheaper than home owners. mine for a duplex i just closed on is 800 per year. I use lease runner when i need to for background and credit checks, but generally you are not surprised at what you get back after meeting perspective renters. If you have a nicer place and charge a little more, you will get better renters. i advertise on zillow/craigslist/padmapper but you may have something that is more popular in your area. also have a sign in the yard. I drop by and do a little maintenance ex: I went and caulked the tubs last week. every once in a while with proper notice, I think that this keeps the renters honest because they know you will be around every so often so they wont get away with pets or extra people for long.
we also did air bnb for a while. make sure your city/town does not have some kind of law against doing it, or if they make you charge hotel tax or if there is a maximum number of days per month for short term. some places have outlawed doing full houses as well. Airbnb is a lot more work, you have to have the place furnished and go in and change the linens / clean and all that after every guest. it was a lot of work doing one bedroom in our house for a summer, but we made about 5k during that summer in a good touristy spot.
for a full house, i would not do airbnb. too much work. even just the summer we did it, we had a couple weird experiences that would make me not want to rent a place that i was not near all the time.
one girl came and was there to stalk someone she met on the internet. she was a real flake and locked her key in the house when we were at work, ripped out the screen in a bdrm where the window was open to get back in. also decided we were her life long friends and started to tell us how she was going to move here with that dude and hang out with us / started trying to friend us on social media and such.
another family was moving here and sent the wife to check out places. she kept extending her stay and then tried to get her husband and kid and dog to stay as well, when we told them no, ( we have pets and it was only one bdrm for rent) she went crazy and was telling us she would send her husband over to intimidate us and all sorts of crazy. never saw anyone or heard boo, predictably. we had a lot of fun meeting many of the people too though.