My wife and I have been doing an MTR-exclusive startegy for 3.5 years, and we still have a hard time figuring out how to predict vacancy, especially in a new market that we're considering.If we look at FF's (pretty crummy) data on their website we either see very few listings, so we think "no one is investing here; bad" or we see a lot of listings and think "too much competition; bad". 

The letters I send to the address on file with the county assessor is bad, no forwarding address.Now I am trying to skip trace.

I can say for a fact that they do not treat the property better than most other people.

They are generally conceived as bad, with exceptions to people having nightmares, but most of that likely has to do with bad screening. 

Your reviews, especially when starting, are everything, and the worst reviews come from bad cleanings and things not disclosed in the listing that should be.You are making the right moves with a designer as long as they have experience in your particular area. 

If you just hire the cheapest or first PMC you speak with and it turns into a bad experience, please don’t assume ALL PMC’s are bad and start trashing PMC’s in general.

Has anyone had any good/bad experiences I can learn from?  

Its best to discuss your scenario further with a investor friendly lender so they can best advise and help you plan to build your investment portfolio because if you make one bad investment that can derail your progress.

You have an 8% vacancy factor, but does that include bad debt? 

Lots of posts about people running with money etc and ghosting people here on BPWhile some deals have gone bad- one thing that is sticking out with those who ghost are their experienceLooking at this persons LinkedIn profile they started around 2020 (while having real estate background but not running a company) - this is a similar theme with many of the others.