@Alex McGhee I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but if the access to online probate court by case number or last name of the deceased is unavailable, then a viable option is http://www.usprobateleads.com that I have used before.

Your problem is that if the tenant has to stay in a hotel, it's the landlord's apartment that's unavailable.

I assess that whether full or part time to be successful one has to invest in systems to manage the business when you're not or unavailable.

The money that is being held that you say is "refundable" won't be because you can't defer the capital gain on the 15% of gross that is being withheld because those funds are unavailable to be included in the next transaction within the timeframe required by the 1031 exchange. 121 home sale exclusion is not applicable to foreign owned investment property. 

Exceptions are on Monday holidays when data/reports are unavailable until the following day.

Owner needs to pick them up in his truck every day, pray that there are no parts to return needed and unavailable, watch for the health and safety of every grain of sand, serve food, motivate, problem solve and never cry.  

My opinion is in both cases I would recommend them start in their home market or a market that they know like their home market and educate themselves on options. owner occupancy provides opportunities that are unavailable by long distance RE investing.In my high cost market, a new investor can use a NACA loan or 95% LTV conventional financing on up to a 4 unit owner occupied property.  

We have a property outside this trust that is only on my husband's name (we couldn't buy it on both of our name due to my unavailability at the time).

Then I scouted the neighborhoods on Zillow and calculated cash flow based on rent z-estimate (used similar house if current property was unavailable).

That way, all of our locks are in the same app and have the same functionality.For exterior deadbolt locks (front door, garage door), we used this:https://a.co/d/2SFMNcy For normal interior locks (bedroom), we used something like this (the ones we have are currently unavailable, but this has similar capabilities):https://a.co/d/8C6nYenYou can create codes from anywhere without the locks having internet connection because it can create them using an offline algorithm.