Aside from me flying out there and physically dragging this guy out, I’m not sure what she can really do.

Ask your agent to do a video walk through if you are unable to physically see the property in person.

Alas, I live in a rural (small city) area so meeting people physically is going to be a rare event so I need to figure out how to overcome this fear/concern. 

If I implemented something like this in my storage business, I would be sure to have in writing to each tenant to ALWAYS have their physical key on hand in case the system is down for any reason and they have to manually unlock their unit.

Let's call this a thought exercise for you, but real for me.I'll try to be succinct and I completely understand that this is very much up to me.  

I personally don't see the value in this exercise as there are opportunities for different strategies in any market.

Also, search online for minimum health/safety/physical requirements of the property/unit. 

However, my physical link to MD is that that is where my parents live.

Kevin,I like studying with physical books, so I went with the Kaplan courses that included books:https://www.kapre.com/real-est...Totally great.

I look through records for owed taxes and things like that, but I always kinda wrote off physically driving around mclean, Langley, oakton ect. areas looking for homes.