I always take a picture of it posted to the door.

From a bigger picture standpoint, I would just say to go with your 'gut feeling' which is already telling you to hold out for the right group.

He is out of Chicago, but I believe he can cover all across the country.

(this covers a lot of ground and serves as a nice framework)

Is it possible to cover your mortgage taxes and insurance through what the average market amount is in the area?

You can have a picture with me anytime, for FREE. :)Travel to Houston is on you though.   

In an effort to bring ANY $ in to help cover the mortgage ($4600 including taxes and insurance), I put together an AirBnB site for the property and set it live, with zero expectation.

We've seen our area MLS which covers about 20 counties come down to an average sold to list price ratio of 95.1% and Knox county specifically has come to 96.4 % which is lower by about 2% from this time last year and down from our peak this year of 98.5%. but it's about in line from winter 2022 into spring 2023 which was a time when rates were rapidly rising.

Just ensure that the projected rental income comfortably covers the new payments, including the HELOC.

We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.