However, hauling away a truckload of items and cleaning beyond standard expectations could reasonably be charged to the tenant, as it goes beyond normal use.Goodwill Gesture: Since this tenant was great for 5.5 years—paying on time and caring for the property—you might consider waiving part of the cleaning cost as a goodwill gesture.

I am wondering if transferring the cash periodically to a standard brokerage IRA account may be my best option.

With enough knowledge you can make a educated decision on which approach you take.My experience:I personally don't sign up for any program who take you aside during events and try to sell packages that is just blatant sales strategy.Once you sign up there is every attempt to make you sign for their programs for bookkeeping, registered agent, LLC or corp setup fee which have ridiculous even with platinum membership.Basic standard structure they suggest to take advantage of multiple deductions can be easily achieved by proper education or work with a good firm like https://wcginc.com  who is local to you.A umbrella C-crop to manage all other LLC properties and take advantage of many tax deductions that are not available with a llc, its also used to take losses up to 100K as startup expenses and dissolve the entity after few years.Few LLC entities for investing in Real Estate, etc preferably in Wyoming or Nevada ( you can find many companies online who can do this for $150 compared to anderson $1500-$3000) , they will claim they have a secret Operating agreement which is bogus.They certainly try to take advantage of tax loopholes and claim to be smart people, my view they are just taking advantage of numbers as per their own statements.

JackieIs there any way they can go and visit the current PM and also meet the new PM, or even ask the new PM to go by the office of the current PM to see if they can see if they are still in business?

The standard legal procedure, as far as I understand in NC is the landlord must make reasonable effort to re-rent the property (which I will), and any vacant time till new tenants are found must be paid by previous tenants.

Is this standard for most major property management companies.

@Brian Rocha It’s clear why most lenders insist on including rehab funds in the loan, and all of our partner banks follow this practice for fix-and-flip loans to minimize risk and meet securitization standards.

In my market, I only have one vendor qualified for appliance warranty work, and the warranty companies paid him half his standard fee for each service call. 

It's mostly Class A properties, a few Class B.You may find the below copy & paste info useful in addressing your question:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

I would recommend buying a standard SFH with opportunities for an ADU, or a split floor plan where you could rent out the rooms!