For context when we do this our biweekly payments have been around $485 per paycheck so around $1,000 per month of lost income per person when we both do it. 

I had no personal animosity towards the man.Just personal opinions on :1.

Small boutique firm, lower mgmt fee, personalized service, good mentions from here (BP forums), focused only on KC.

That depends on a lot of personal factors such as your finances.

@Sarah Hadassah Negrón so you get a money judgment.Now you have to turn that into a garnishment action with the courts.To do that, you typcially need to have the tenant personally served - which means finding them or hiring a skip-tracer to do so.Then, what are you going to garnish?

Then I have still have to pay the person who was acting as a host even though no one came. 

@Jared Goldwasseri would strongly recommend you go to Cincinnati in person. 

All I can say is that when an investor is the person who's doing the job that a real estate broker is commissioned to do, per state law, that's brokering without a license, which is no bueno and shouldn't be allowed. 

I make it a personal goal to never turn down help.

The idea of debt-free is that if a person is going to retire and has to completely depend on the income, they don't want a severe recession surprising them and causing them to default on the debt and losing the properties.In a normal world, I would do that as well.