The good part is that the house stayed dry.

Do not go with Shawnee property mgmt - we ended up renting/buying the house we moved into that they had (it was part of their family portfolio and we saw potential in fixing it up and the school district it was in so lived with it but until we knew we were staying in it and would buy they would hardly respond to anything - a couple times the AC quit and I was at work/wife was at home and it was 90 plus inside the house, when we moved in the house was completely filthly and had not been cleaned at all - walking around on the laminate floors your feet would be black in about 5 mins due to all the dirt - bugs/spiders everywhere -- House needs completely rebuilt and is in a great location - quite frankly house is a piece of crap but it's what we could afford and I felt comfortable buying not to mention I believe it has a ton of upside in just cleaning up the 6 acre lot, we strategically add on to the house and rebuild it and the sky is the limit - but they were completely non responsive and check out their google reviews - they are accurate)I'd heard from some of our employees that either WCW  or RMS (I probably have the initials wrong on both but it's close enough) were good - one of those 2 have good reviews online and whichever was the good one the employee mentioned they had rented from/through them for quite a while and had been having a good experience and responsiveness if anything was ever wrong.In WIchita I manage my own stuff and manage a couple of properties for others but my younger brother does/has lived in a rental for a couple of years that is managed by Cedar Mills - he's had a pretty good experience with them - I was also at his house in March when the UFC fight came to town as I stayed the night there  - anyways long story short on Saturday afternoon around 4pm there was a ghetto rigged sprinkler riser pipe buried in the ground in front of the water hydrant (the homeowner did this when they lived there)  - my brother didnt know about it as it had some sort of rotted piece of plywood covering it up - he stepped to shut off the water faucet and broke through the wood breaking the riser - it didnt have the proper shutoffs on it so we had to cut the water at the meter to the house - Cedar Mills had a plumber out at his house in a couple hours to fix it and - I was actually impressed - I'd have a hard time pulling that off on a Saturday that late.

Seems as though if you're not willing to renovate to their standards then they would prefer to let the property sit and rot. 

That money can be dried up really fast and then she is put in a bad position.  

Equity can dry up with a real estate crash.

Tim -- what are your thoughts on freeze-dried and/or MREs?

Laundry Service (Dry Cleaning add your markup)5.

Other less expensive improvements would be adding credit card readers and in-bay drying systems.

I wouldn't change anything except buy more of these properties if I had a chance to go back.When I invest, I try to get the best ROI and ROT (Return on Time) and these low priced properties have given me a good mix of both.

Bay Area growth could be attributed to the Dream Force conference, Mammoth's decline could be operators quitting after a dry summer with many fires.