Then there is suddenly a drop in the level of communication and responsiveness, I switch management companies, and then discover that my properties suffered a good deal of damage due to faulty management.

Everyone gets excited when a few flips net a huge profit, you see other houses in the neighborhood do it as well, then all of a sudden after a few years you've got these empty expensive homes that no one wants for the new price point because of new builds or location or yadda yadda. 

Second, for dealing with an existing tenant, its hard for people to adjust to sudden changes in their budget.

. [$2000 - $3000 /month]7) Drive said paid traffic to your credible website WHILE you focus on SEO (to start generating free actually motivated seller leads)8) In about 3 weeks to 1.5 months you should see a steady flow of leads coming in9) If you did a good job with your ad targeting, these leads should make you about $20K to $30K the first few months10) Now you hire an acquisitions manager and a receptionist [$4K to $7K/month] but you don't feel it because you are making about $20K/month11) With these people in place, now you can scale to double the deal flow, so you are now at $40K to $60K/month12) Now you triple your marketing budget13) Scale income even more.14) 3 to 5 months have passed since you started this and suddenly your first organic leads start to flow in.15) Now your profit/lead has doubled (organic leads are WAY better than paid leads)16) Now within 6 months you now make $100K+?

The long term plan has always been to BRRR it, however I just wanted to allow a bit of time to pass for comps to surge in the area.

Please tell me more, thanks.In other news, when I wrote to my property manager and said I wasn't happy with his progress and was considering switching, I "suddenly" got a really good lead within 12 hours! 

The properties are probably worth a lot more than your parents paid for them, and if your mother is retired, and if she wasn't involved in the business, it may be less stressful to sell at some point, but you should take some time to assess the situation, especially after a sudden passing.

If you have a partner who suddenly is going thru a divorce and needs to exit before you've turned the corner, it can be bad.

The access to the MLS won't give you that much more knowledge than you already have, so don't expect to suddenly see tons of deals that you haven't been seeing.

Were they paying prior and suddenly stopped?