@William F.
Answering your questions:
1) I personally don't think it can be done well. We built our company in Cincinnati while we lived there. One of our partners still lives there. To make the jump and expand into ATL markets I packed up and made the move so I could be here in person. In my opinion, managing remotely won't work unless you build the team and systems and then manage remotely.
2) I think you may have to dig deeper on this one for a better understanding. Yes, property tax insurance is considered "must pay bills" just like maintenance and many other expenses these are labeled operating expenses. Think of operating expenses as an expense that would be a cost for anyone who owns the asset. If I own it, you own it, or warren buffet owns it we all operating expenses. P&I is not an operating expense because it depends on who owns it. you may get a 6% 15-year loan, I get a 3% 30-year loan and Mr. Buffet may pay cash. Becuase of this P&I is not a "must pay" and is not an operating expense.
Knowing these metrics is how the value of the property is calculated. To find the value you take gross income - operating expense = NOI. Divide NOI by the market's cap rate and you have the property value.
So on a very basic example if your properties gross income is $100,000 and operating expense is $60,000 your NOI is $40,000 and the cap rate is 10% that means the property is worth $400,000. Now if that same property had higher property taxes when you bought it the example may look like this: gross income is $100,000 and operating expense is $65,000 ( all $5,000 increase comes from property tax being higher). your NOI is then $35,000 and the cap rate is 10% that means the property is worth $350,000. So yes you are paying more in taxes but paying less in purchase price to account for the cost of taxes you will incur in the future.
So my point from my last post was if you are in one of the higher property tax % Areas the probability that you will lose value on your property due to a property tax increase is less likely than if you buy in the low tax area where the government can raise property tax easier without out pricing the going tax rate of the market and killing demand for 1-4 unit buyers. I am not saying you should go out and target high property tax areas. I am just saying there is not need to fear them as long as you account for the cost of those taxes on the purchase.
2+) Talk to your CPA on this. I would never hold investment property in a C or S corp. I always hold in an LLC taxed as a partnership. When done correctly you should have very little taxable income being generated from buy and hold property. You may make substantial actual cash flow but after depreciation and all the other tax benefits income tax should be very low or you should have a paper loss.
I wrote some in-depth articles on this for BP on this stuff. Here is a link to one. You can search my name I write an article every two weeks that has this kind of info in it.
https://www.biggerpockethttps://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/how-the-wealthy-invest/s.com/renewsblog/how-the-wealthy-invest/
