I self manage my few properties and have not had any issues at all with the City of Indianapolis. 

If you do most things right, most issues are mitigated and it's not too bad, but there's no guarantees.

I bet if converted BACK, it would be 4br+, probably a rather spacious 4br+: - a whole lot easier to rent given much more demand for such vs efficiency or 1brs- no longer competing in any way against apartments- no more utility issues, because tenants cover 100% of there own utilaties- no more headaches of wrangling different persons to play nice togetherAnd on and on and on...... 

The snow companies that are good can be really pricey and we have had issues with some of the smaller guys in past.

(other issue was a leaky toilet we took care of, at our expense).  

Since the properties are in New York you have a few extra steps you need to do to keep all of your funds out of NYs hands at closing.Here's an interesting BP thread on the South Carolina property tax issue you mentioned. https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/725/topics/604427-south.... 

. - Just be prepared, because a motivated seller typically has a property with issues you need to be sure you can solve.

Do you see any new rental property up in the market has increased rent since L.A. fire issue?

As an example, we decided to replace the windows in a house we were renovating and ended up costing us $50,000 extra because we got into issues with permitting and suddenly found ourselves having to hire an architect, speciality contractors, etc.  

Requiring a copy of a government-issued ID is a good extra layer of security.