Unnecessary words pay my bills. 

The purpose is to ensure that the selling agent doesn't end up with a passive-aggressive or incompetent loan officer who creates unnecessary delays or fails to ensure that the sale of the property will close.

I am not sure what happened or why it was left to grow too long but was wondering if anyone had systems in place to prevent this kind of issue and if it has worked well for them?

Prevented me from buying my first property for a long time (almost 20 years, don't be me!).  

After all, if someone is getting $1k a week for.... doing nothing - what would prevent him/her from doing nothing?

All utilities in a vacant unit would be on in the owner's name, however this does not prevent the PM from obtaining the account numbers and making the payments on the owner's behalf through the trust account funds.

We don't have to take any unnecessary risk.

Most leases prevent subletting and operating a business from the rental.

(I don't send lock codes until 2 days before arrival in any case, but my thought is more to prevent people from *purposefully* showing up early)

The reason the landlord may pay it is to prevent the tenant from running up a large bill and then moving out.