:-) From a property managers perspective, I also think its great that you've decided to take on out of state self management for very legitimate reasons...Nothing is void of a few challenges, as we can all attest to, so as you embark, I wanted to share a few top reasons our owners choose to hire a management company. - As @Jonathan Klemm mentioned, passing on this load so that you can be more present and attentive to your family and not be essentially working  24/7, on-call for the needs of tenants and property emergencies... can be worth the management fees. 

We tend to push rents $50 until we see the traffic on our listings drop.

They tend to be the ones posting religiously on linkedin the benefits of garbage investment strategies in order to continually feed their business and have poorly drafted operating agreements often with side letters that are really  only necessary to hide from their lenders where their capital is coming from. 

It seems that often when companies acquire large books of business in one shot there are growing pains and unfortunately those are felt at the client level.

I tend to agree. 

•Homes that accommodate more guests (more beds, larger spaces) tend to perform better, but they may also experience slow seasons.

Unless new companies move into the city and create replacement jobs, all that will remain are lower-paying service sector jobs.

In these cities, the good tends to get better and the bad gets worse.

@Dwight HenningRecommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

But I tend toward more Class C than B.