What am I doing wrong?

[Mary Jay]

Ive been a landlord for about 18 years... Normally, if a tenant moves out it cost me under $600 to clean/paint, etc regardless of the area... Lately things have been very different... The last couple of tenants who moved out made me think about what am I doing wrong here....

1) Tenant in Arizona (Phoenix), a 5 Bdr 3 bath house located in an expensive area. The tenant was a truck driver and was making 100k per year plus her credit score was 700. That was the best applicant, I thought, due to income/credit. She had 4 adult children and a few grandkids. She stopped paying after one year and I had to evict her. The walls were black from hand prints, grease on the ceiling, gum and candy on the carpets, the cleaning company came 3 times to clean, doors screens broken, pool is broken, a tree fell and was laying on the ground, it cost me 7 k to turn it around... She lived there for 1 year.

2) The second tenant is in Florida.  The neighbor told me that the house looked messy plus things would always break, so Ive decided not to renew the lease, and after she moved out they give me an estimate of 15-20k to turn it around (Painting and fixing holes in the walls alone cost 7.5K, cockroaches and fleas, etc...). She lived there for 5 years. It is a 4 Bdr 3 bath house plus a basement. Bad credit, kind of white trash looking...

Both houses are big. Is that the problem?