Have a good group of people on the ground who you can call to fix things when something comes up. 

This will provide protection both against the city as well as provide ability for you to pursue eviction if needed. if you rent an illegal unit and the tenant doesn't pay you have no grounds for eviction.

If the utility company shuts off the water that is grounds for termination. 

Your numbers are likely based on if everything goes well and not if everything fails, which is more likely.Just the idea of buying a property to rent to five people who don't know each other and also live on the grounds in a trailer should seem ludicrous to more people.

I would set ground rules on decision making.

So outsourcing some degree of property mgmt would be a must... but the deal won't work paying a local property manager a large % of my revenue...Instead, I would set up my "boots on the ground" (cleaners, handyman), and would need an offshore virtual assistant to manage guests and coordination of my local team. 

Buildium is a nice middle ground and can bring a lot of organization if you don't have a robust bookkeeping system.

So, keeping an eye on it and addressing minor fixes (like securing loose shingles) can be a practical middle ground.

Russel I would not say D that is a far stretch I will give it a c+ and this is a great time to get in on the ground level.

This is anywhere, so I had one house that was a 2 story property with no upper porch (aka no way to get to the roof of the house) where one peak of the property trim was flaking that you could see from the ground.