Every area I know has gotten worse and worse and worse on it.Fifteen years ago,  when I was buying, rehabbing houses and holding, I oculd hire a licensed contractor and they were able to change toilets, faucets, even water heaters.

Find all of them, make them an offer and hire an attorney and get the the property through probate with you as the buyer.

I had to fire my last one and hired this one almost 1 year ago.

This is how I started out - it was not passive, even though I hired contractors to do the work and property managers to manage the tenants.  

However, whatever route you go make sure you hire an independent agent rather than captive so they can shop the entire market for you! 

REPS is outside of the scope of this post.

But unless you are a market expert and know exactly where the neighborhood cut off, and what a tenant in that area would expect etc, then you'll likely have a hard time without an agent or local rep of some kind.  

The smartest thing to do is to hire a bookkeeper now who has experience working with real estate investors.

Otherwise, hire a pro to help maintain it.

I hired a surveyor to do a site plan, which he did and which he stamped.