Agree with your considerations. But generally you don't have to do allot of maintenance at any one point in time. Water heaters are probably the biggest out of the blue maintenance expense - in that regard choose a house that has mains gas if possible as a replacement hot water heater installed should be less than $1500, if you have an electric only water heater you may not be able to do a straight replacement like for like due to new environment regulations so you will have to install a solar hot water service or a heat pump and that will cost you around $5 to $6k as I found out a few years ago.
You always need to ensure your financial situation allows for the possibility of not getting rent from a property for whatever reason for a few months - if you can't do this you are too highly geared. Additionally you should always have a credit card with credit available to cover emergency repair costs such as a hot water service.
