These two contractors may not like that area, or just had one bad experience, so it would be great if you could explore more of what other experiences people had/have in the city. 

All the bad spelling above.  

If anyone could include what to look out for in a good deal and a bad deal

Tenants with bad credit know it and are expecting you to ask for a larger deposit.

We don’t know any PMCs to recommend in the area mentioned, but since selecting the wrong PMC is usually more harmful than selecting a bad tenant, you might want to read our series about “How to Screen a PMC Better than a Tenant”:https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/3094/91877-how-to-screen-a-pmc-better-than-a-tenant-part-1-services-and-processesWe recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

Legal or not if you put the wrong tenants inn your property with out proper (VETTING) it's your fault and if your real estate agent agent puts in a bad tenant it's also your fault.

Any house here that's sub $100k, on or off market, is going to be so bad it will need $30-75k in rehab.

Multiple people had some bad things to say about the area, but when I moved and realized that it was a low income area with a lot of homeowners, I was motivated to improve the property to match the effort my neighbors have put in. 

This can be good when it comes to avoiding taxes but bad when it comes to qualifying for a loan.

We were on a very quick timeline and were able to get one quote that didn't seem too bad, but we still were concerned about future resale value.