Are you aware that every day you let water leak in the repairs from damage the water is causing to the property get more expensive?

For example, it could be in an undesirable or unsafe location, overpriced relative to the market, managed by a property manager or landlord of poor repute, or be substandard in quality.Nonetheless, if you’re more confident about investing in Chattanooga, there’s no problem with that either—it’s a solid market.

Not only can who you work with impact your bottom line tax-wise, but you want to make sure you work with a reputable firm. 

You build a solid reputation as a deal closer, vs someone who bails when their portion of the deal doesn't work out. 

They kept telling me "sorry I'm gonna be late", and I didn't want to evict them with only 1 month left because I felt like they could be spiteful and do a lot of damage to the property.

Hey @Julie Brangenberg - I have an AirBnB here in Chicago but never in specific college towns...I would tend to say that it's probably not the best location unless you have boots on the ground there.I could also see more damage being done in college towns, higher repairs maintenance, and shorter stays but that is honestly just a hypothesisIs there a specific reason you want to get into the STR space?

Good chance a major problem - tenant non payment or damage, needed major repair, etc. puts you cash flow negative for that year.  

I see a lot of discussion here about maximizing profits and adding clauses to leases so that tenants take more responsibility for things, but I'm interested to know some advice about how to take better care of tenants to build up a good reputation and practice business in a fair and compassionate way.

For example, below is a photo of a boarded-up fire-damaged property in poor condition.The popular site for a rental estimates I checked predicted the rent as $2,199/Mo.

It also appears that there's a STRONG correlation between tax sales and distressed property (plus, arguably, worthless property) - ie it's showing on Zillow it's 400k but for the last 5 years it's been a meth lab with fire damage, or whatever.