The police love to claim it's a "civil matter" so they won't have to spend time and energy on it. 

At times, we outsource as a result of time constraints or to leverage someone else's expertise.

Many of the OTAs and lead gen sites, like Furnished Finder, are pushing credit card payments. 99.9% of the time I get a message from FF saying 'your tenant would prefer to pay by credit card so activate Stripe now!' 

The other thing to think about is the length of time you've owned the property.

PMs and realtors want to use people they know that have been in the business and do a good job for them.

I plan to consult a tax professional but before wasting anyone's time I would like to ask whether I can technically claim the property as a rental in 2024 even though our first contract started Jan. 1, 2025?

They are worth the money for a good hot tub that is mentioned all the time in reviews and doesn't have a ton of issues.

The market has understandebly dipped and it seems that it would be a good time to get in. 

If the water bill is $100 a month, increase the price by 20% (or whatever you decide is fair) to compensate you for the time required to split and bill and to cover additional use when tenants squander the utility.

Make sure it would be someone you could learn from in the deal and then I would encourage you to only use a portion (probably only 50k to 100k) of your available capital in the deal.