@Michael Seeker Great way to find information on owner to make offers, by the way you may or may not have a false alarm lien on yours,lol.

They got the water tank and copper lines before the alarm company could install the security system.

The only one who would have been turning the water back on is the tenant.So, you can assume the tenant is a thief and NOT believe their claim the water dept doesn't show up.Tenant is unlikely to agree to pay previous charges - even if they "agree" doubtful they will actually pay.Caseworker may or may not be of assistance, as most are overworked & underpaid. 

You do not have our permission to enter our home without our consent and we will have the house alarmed for police response should you or anyone else attempt to enter while we are not here.

Do we invest in a monitored alarm system for the property and pay for it ourselves? 

So with your example showing an 18% yield isn’t alarming to me but I would want to investigate the property more closely and have a BPO performed and talk to a local PM to better understand the market. 

I do think about that when looking at areas to invest in as we've seen some areas around us have wells go dry and this continues at an increasingly alarming rate as we draw down our aquifers and ground water through agriculture, industrial use and population growth in areas that have no natural sources of water.

I had a 5 story fire escape that was steel that looked horrible, I put two guys with sanders and high gloss black paint on it and a few days later we were done. since it is metal you might be able to sand out the rust and weld back any missing metal.I would have that inspected by a local fire alarm person (they often do fire escapes also), you would be amazed at what does not need to be replaced.Also, talk to the fire marshal to make sure any repairs you are planning are good with him, do that early, he will appreciate it.

The companies also all managed to nearly double the price of their water heaters in the past 5 years as well.Hearing this news from the plumber was rather alarming as it drastically changes the cash flow that I can expect on these properties if I can't buy a water heater in this country that lasts much more than 5 years. 

This issue can be avoided completely by transferring the property into a land trust.While a transfer to an LLC will cause alarms at the bank and prompt them to send you a letter, a transfer to a trust will not.