You agree with the management to pay monthly towards your property taxes only to find out your years in arrears and no payments have been made.When you do manage to switch to a new PM company, the old PM cannot produce leases current, PM has misplaced keys, tenants deposit has miraculously disappeared, house was left "unsecured" and thieves have removed all copper plumbing from the house and/or there's a squatter who's taken up residence.Only a licensed real estate person can legally manage other people's property.

You can put a trailer on vacant land, but without a fence and/or good neighbors, it's vulnerable to thieves while you are away.PM me if you want to talk further. 

Thieves, vandals, squatters, kids, animals, bugs all of this equals damage to the home and no one is there to monitor any of it.

The neighborhood directly to the east on Van Buren and Everest are full of generational families consisting of thieves and drug addicts.

Overall, I've done well with my SFRs but when they go vacant, I have zero income and they are a juicy target for thieves and vandals. 

The thieves do not identify themselves for you. 

thieving crews around Baltimore are efficient and experienced, Most will only break into a house they know to be vacant, this house doesnt appear that way from the outside. 

I am going to sell that boat in the driveway.. or back in the day you had the real Thieves the mod companies that would blanket the country ripping people off for 1 to 2k and promise help them but really do nothing but help them lose the house.. most based in FLA for obvious reasons. ( judgment proof state).So to be successful at this I finally learned I only went to homes were the sale was within 1 to 3 days.. at that point they realize they need to deal with me.. and most of my competitors did not have real cash they were newbie wanna bee's who needed to wholesale or use a HML.. so that knocked down the competition plus they did not have the connections at the title co I had were I could get title done on the phone in real time. so I knew exactly were I stood.. and then could get 20 to 50k cashiers check and run a courier in person up to Seattle to northwest trustee services and redeem the day before the auction. 

@John Rooster , there are a lot of homes available for rent that no one knows about because landlords and property management companies try to keep copper thieves from finding out that they are empty.

Local laws encourage thieves to steal and break into cars without any fear of prosecution.