It made more financial sense and was much easier than flipping more houses and paying taxes on ordinary income. 

Ordinary income versus capital gain?

It is taxed the same as ordinary income, regardless of whether you have your own management company. 

It is completely normal to spend about 10% of your annual income on ordinary maintenance.

Anyway it's very hard to do anything out of the ordinary in Irvine, if ever there were a Stepford community, that's it.

The amounts not treated as return of capital will be treated as unrecaputred 1250 gain (taxed at ordinary rates with max of 25%) until all depreciation has been recaptured. 

You must also claim $75,000 of ordinary income on top of anything else you already earn.

How not to deal with them just like ordinary tenants by screening, credit checking, etc...

In terms of your experience thus far, just know much of your experience is not out of the ordinary.

As you accumulate wealth its much easier to bifurcate it and invest the "cash" in depreciating assets and retirement funds in things like notes/lending etc. which are typically taxed at ordinary income.