I invest out of state in Pittsburgh from DC and self-manage everything, but it's taken me years to establish the right contacts, develop seamless processes etc. that allow me to handle everything remotely with confidence.

There are property management companies that handle everything—from guest check-ins to maintenance—so you don’t have to worry about being hands-on.

This is a task to handle carefully and at arms length. 

Challenges?

Challenges?

.: Thanks for the replies I totally understand you can not eliminate risk 100%I was just wondering if there was a safer way to handle this. 

I think the idea of planning on selling 1-2 lots per exchange might be easer to handle.

As someone who has read Harry Potter, it seems the best way to get the attention of the landlord is to send a scary looking giant to their home residence with a kindly worded letter.More seriously, I was on the other side of the coin previously where my wife put the ads up under her accounts instead of mine, so I couldn't check them without getting on her phone and I was inundated with people looking to see the property (probably 50 over a 5 day period) and was trying to send semi-personalized notes to each one--and it all ended up being too much to handle and I ended up ghosting or not replying to many people after I found an applicant. 

Turnkey companies usually handle buying and renovating the property, then partner with a local third-party management company to handle day-to-day operations.

There are rental management tools like Stessa, Baselane, Innago, and many others that include income/expense tracking that handles all the accounting tasks and reporting you really need for rentals.