It often takes living and breathing the industry around the clock for a few years before you start seeing consistent returns.

Often times a lot of the services they offer are in-house - yardcare, handyman etc so they are taking another cut off services they provide as well.

One piece of advice I often repeat is that the goal of diversification is to reduce or eliminate any single point of failure.  

One of my rentals always rents quickly, consistently performing well in terms of tenant demand.2.

PM fees typically run 8-10% of monthly rent for a duplex plus often a leasing fee of 50-100% of one month's rent when placing new tenants.

However, lenders often add their own requirements, and many interpret the “intent to occupy” as a longer-term commitment, sometimes defaulting to the 1-year rule as a safeguard. 

Common advice I've received from other landlords is to avoid them because they often leak or fail and are difficult to maintain.

Like many professional services, I have found you often have to go through several before you find the right one. 

This is more than enough to tell you what kind of tenants they are going to be.

We often use zoom showings, but they build on that mutual in-person experience.We don't encourage bottom-of-the-barrel neighborhoods, simply because with 60-120 year old properties capex tends to exceeed cash flow over time aka money pit.