I would recommend my main PM because he checks a few key boxes: 1) no time commitment (i.e. he doesn't try to lock you in for a year), 2) uses PM software so you have some visibility into what's going on, and 3) has had strong and frequent communication.

When a tenant is in arrears, they should be checking more frequently ... and they should have never allowed them to get "several months" behind.IMHO, the PM company should be embarrassed about dropping the ball and offer to shoulder some of the pain (if they have in-house trades/staff, they could provide the labour at very little cost to themselves).  

We inherit portfolios frequently that have situations similar in that the tenants do not have leases and they also may not want to pay rent. 

Frequently, we come across similar cases where there is a huge difference between seller expectations and reality.

All of these things are legal and constitute good advice frequently given here at BP.

We do this quite frequently with reverse exchanges as transferring membership of the LLC avoids a second real estate closing, associated costs like transfer tax and doc stamps, real estate property tax resets, and it still qualifies as replacement property for 1031.

In fact, I can't make it through a whole episode anymore without fast forwarding or turning it off.I think it is partially due to the frequent changing of hosts and the loss?

When they move, you are frequently going to have to paint and redo floors every vacancy.

Zillow, Trulia and such gives some information but frequently its not sufficient (ie Too few comparable home sold within the 0.5 mile radius or even the same zip code). 

Again, I'm not tied to any particular location, and am frequently out of the country a lot, so I'm location agnostic.