I remember selling my house in MD (close to Washington DC) in 2009 for career movement purposes back to GA, and I suffered quite the whipping to the tune of six figures (all lost equity) on a House I had owned for ~ 5 years.  

The most leeway I give property management companies is probably 24-48 hours to respond (assuming during normal business hours during the week).

I joined myself here just a week or so ago.

I'm new to the Bigger Pockets community and have been listening to the podcast for about 3 weeks now.

The "issue" I'm having as of late is that I've automated a decent amount of the work processes here, which leaves me with a lot, and I mean a lot, of spare time on a weekly basis.

I work a full-time schedule of 12-hr shifts, and my schedule is different every week and includes weekends, so there is no way I can take a classroom course without quitting my job.

Currently work as a nurse and have a good portion of my week off since I work 12 hour shifts.Thanks! 

I was away for over a week and am late in acknowledging your comments and support. 

Just because it's my first deal I'm obviously more intimidated and also feel like if I do the first deal wrong it will be harder to recover vs. if it was my 3rd or 4th deal and I have something to fall back to.Anyway, I'm actually interested in the market in Philly and was there a week ago to check out some properties, would love to hear more about what you do there.

If that hole has been there for weeks or months and you start pulling stuff away from the walls and water starts dripping out of the garbage you shoudl assume its soaked into the walls.