During the tenancy, monitor how well the tenants abide by the terms of the rental agreement.

This is what I use in all my properties, once their staged and on the market (don't want anyone stealing the furniture):http://lasershield.net/There's no reason you couldn't use it in your properties from the time you take possession.You don't need a phone line...they have a wireless interface that will call you if there is a break-in, and if you don't respond (or don't want to disable the alarm when it calls you), their monitoring center will notify the police.Luckily, I've never had a real alarm, but the couple times an agent has entered a house without calling ahead, I got proof that this system works just as expected.

We are upgrading our security cameras, but as a previous poster mentioned, if no-one is watching the cameras at night or the system is not setup to alert you, the cameras are only good for monitoring during office hours and playback for thefts that occur during the night.

If they're a competing broker, their employees are answering the phone, monitoring the office email and any paid lead source.

The amount of time it takes someone to learn how to properly do SEO on their own, therefore "no cost", and then to actually do the SEO and then continue to monitor and improve SEO doesn't seem to return enough added value to overcome just paying someone to do that for them.

You can't expect the realtor to monitor the MLS drip he/she sends to your email. 

There's no foolproof way to know for sure if a house is vacant anyway, save for maybe checking for an installed electric meter or monitoring water usage.

How is compliance monitored?

Who is to monitor safety?

Just increase the rent a little and monitor overall consumption and let the tenants know - maybe post the water bill on the hallway as an FYI.