Building relationships and finding the right deals will be key to your success - also make sure to start out small and go from there - don't get into something too big/you can't handle.

Its just a really small town and very few towns nearby. 

Small improvements or updates can justify slightly higher rents too.

So if not owning the land, it needs to cash flow like a small river to be worth the work.  

The quaility of old existing units, and the ability of the long term population to pay new rents, blended with an influx of small high end mill conversion units is simply not balanced.

We keep 8 figure working we are small time but if you check my website you can see what we do in a short over view..

Also I am thinking now that these are small rural counties with population in the entire county probably no more than 50k or so.. at least with most of those folks living in the city of Oroville which is right on the border with British Columbia In my flying days I would go into Oroville to get through US customs compared to going into one of the airports Airports north of Seattle .

Unless you need them installed for mortgage appraisal, recommend:1) A price reduction or 2) Small price reduction for installation labor and have someone pick up & store the mechanicals the seller provides.Otherwise, they will just get stolen again!

I would imagine the best actions would be to immediately fire the management company, pass the keys onto a new one, sue the old one in small claims court for the listed damages.

Much of my career was focused on REO properties, during which I ran a parallel small business that handled property inspections and performed BPOs for banks.