If you sit empty for one month, you lose $1250 for PITI, plus utilities and any other expenses.

Will definitely utilize it all soon :). 

Quote from @Pat Arneson:Usually, the city website has all the utility companies for the city that you should be contacting.

@Dennis GallagherIt's my understanding that the "Income-Expense Ratio" primarily use operating expenses as the expense variable, which includes costs like utilities, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, repairs, property management fees, and trash removal, all of which are considered when calculating a property's operating expense ratio (OER).You calculate OER by dividing the total operating expenses by the gross operating income of a property.

Are you paying any utilities as the owner, aside from water and user fee?

Even without a budget for repairs/etc - let's just define "cashflow" as income left over after PITI & utilities for a moment - Mac Groveland and Highland Park are going to be tough.

(prorating utilities by tenant head count for instance). 

However, if you're running your numbers then you'll want to make sure that you're including all the interested paid for the money borrowed from your HELOC as well as the carrying costs including utilities, insurance and property taxes.

They can take care of a lot of the monotonous tasks, and even do things like send leases, screen tenants, add rent charges, pay utility bills, the list goes on. 

I'd love to utilize their expertise when assessing a property since they are local but I'm not sure what the general expectation is when I don't have a tangible property and I have not entered into contract to work with them yet.Some questions I have are: local regulations/permitting timeline, property's potential from their perspective, landscaping/amenities cost estimate (they also help facilitate this).