All this vigorous energy oozing out of my essence and there I was; splattering it around everything like a three year old kid frolicking around in a muddy rain puddle!

I don't know what a good vacancy rate is as opposed to a bad one.. but if your managing 2k to 10k houses I suspect your always have some manner of vacancy.. the main take away for me is you simply cannot buy property in the "cash flow markets" were your buying in the lower third of the economics of a given MSA.. those are just tough for whatever reason history has proved this.. most of the buyers have only them selves to blame here.. they are all mesmerized about COC returns and take risk they just don't understand.. then they blame the tenant and the asset.. when in fact its their own choices that lead to the inevitable in low value asset or bottom third in price point in a MSA..

How will your portfolio perform during an economic downturn when asset values are declining?

The 10% that tend to take up most of the landlords energy and efforts are the 10% that test people's stomachs to see if they are cut out for this business. 

As @Chris Clothier and @Curt Smith have pointed out, there is a lot of good data on economic and demographic trends readily available.

If you can't get in touch with the existing tenant, you may be wasting your time and energy.

Given the house is older and bills are higher, I suspect HVAC and appliances may be out of date, hence the large energy costs.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/1970s-great-inflation.asp

I just designed very economical 2b/1/b 6-plexs based on a 30x30 (900 sf) footprint for a developer.

And that's exactly what's happening now, and will continue to happen for generations, as the EU successfully manages through economic policies to breed the Greek population down to small-enough numbers to sustain itself on an economy based on specialty agriculture and tourism.So this is what I learned: no matter what your business strategy is, you are never going to successfully cheat the piper forever.