The one month's worth of rent covers some costs (cleaning, readvertising) and the rest is a hedge against vacancy.

The question for seasoned investors is, are mentorships worth their cost, or is doing your own research just as good?  

So, by trying to get a tenant out and replace them with another tenant you have a 50% chance they will be the same or worse, plus the expense, lost rent due to vacancy, plus any tenant placement costs with your PM.

Cost of the website was $65,000.  

DIY managing is usually best, so you learn enough to avoid getting taken advantage of if/when you hire a PMC in the future.Your challenge is learning enough to avoid lawsuits and costly mistakes!

If we rent our house out, the tenant would likely cover our entire mortgage, but our HOA costs are high (they were raised a lot recently).

Expense Deductions: Deduct direct expenses like materials, labor, and selling costs.4.

Read about finding off market deals and marketing to them; read about making offers and estimating rehab costs; read about building a buyers list; read about the analytics of a good rental property of flip property.

Unless you're in a place to do a 1031 exchange (which can have higher transaction costs, depending on the situation), there likely is a significant amount of capital gains to pay upon sale of a property for reinvesting, or if investing in alternate markets like stocks, bonds, CDs, etc. 

Whe shopping around you are going to see that some charge more interest but less closing costs and other less interest and more closing costs.