I wasn’t prepared to lose so much of my savings as carrying cost basically I paid for the tenants to live there for 3 months + my own living expenses in that time.

I wouldn’t go there myself… you lose a lot of control, your house will see a lot more traffic / damage.  

Meet the players. 

The PM vets I know will all confirm that you lose much less by lowering your rate of (monthly) rent than by missing an entire month of income! 

You have some people in here who are cool with and celebrate losing over $1,000 a month.

There are people here who have no problem losing hundreds to thousands in negative cash flow monthly.

Sad truth of our current legal system, but if you go through the eviction process and he loses all this stuff, you are in the clear. 

if you buy a random property on Zillow and turn it over to people you have never met, you will very likely lose money, get frustrated, and set yourself back.if you're serious i'd pick a market and plan on making several trips there. 

If you lose your source of primary income, do you have enough cash to make it through the crisis? 

As long as you don't lose money.