What surprised me was that the man is in the real estate business and should know about the importance of notification of long term unauthorized "visitors".

I am no expert and am always willing to listen, but if I have to listen to one more 20 minute lecture on how a property will cash flow because it will cover the mortgage payments I am going to scream.

First...you might want to talk to local RE Investors, & see if there are TRULY any who have THEIR OWN CASH, & are willing to BUY....now.....If you do, just find a Deal, get it under Contract, & bring it to the Investor with the cash.If you work with an all cash transaction, they can pay you a fee....but, not so with a Title Company & a Lender involved....they just scream: "FLIP", & want to run away from you.

The re-muddled single families I've seen scream bad plumbing, bad electric, bad heating systems (usually one for the entire building) and generally high maintenance.

Given the fact that I work a full-time job and time is limited, there are enough screaming deals (REOs and SSs) on the MLS that I'll probably wait to go after SF until I hit my limit.

Once, the wife was screaming and cursing on the phone while sitting on the porch.

January was our best month on BiggerPockets and we ended up just shy of a monster milestone: 500,000 unique visitors for the month.That's right -- we ended up just a few thousand unique visitors short of a half-million unique visitors on BiggerPockets in January.Our total visits, visitors and pageviews were all up between 24% and 28% over our next best month.

That way when they move in and the first weekend they have to break a window to get back in the Townhome because they left their key inside...or on Sunday night the toilet overflowed and they are screaming on your phone that you need to get out there, right now or they are not paying you the Rent...or there is a cockroach infestation with possums in the attic because your Tenant is a filthy Pig and wants to make you clean up the mess.

Maybe try finding real estate investment clubs you can visit or meet with during one of your monthly visits. 

Planning a certain amount of loss for monthly repairs like a plumbing visit or HVAC repair is wise, but if there are no repairs, you get to keep the money.