Realtor was not honest about the septic company he hired to test the system.

My first few inspections were helpful to help understand building systems and routine maintenance schedules (don’t have to worry about that stuff when you’re a renter.)Sadly inspections afterward, for investment properties, only turn up obvious items that’s hard to miss if you personally walk the property looking in the nooks and crannies.Rot, poor wiring, improper framing, water leaks, etc that are behind the walls is when I’ve gotten into trouble.

So if you have good ones, treat them right and don't sweat the small stuff, control what you can and perfect your systems to define expectations, reward them when they do well (bonus for finishing early, bonus for short punch list etc).

PM is not easy and requires systems and a team, but it can be rewarding and lucrative if done correctly.  

@Dax Squillante  Using your numbers (which I would be very surprised if you can keep your costs that low), your breaking even with zero cap ex reserves (one piece of equipment needing to be replaced like an AC system, furnace, refrigerator, etc, would put you at a loss for quite a while).  

Eviction would take a couple months before COVID/courts closed/impacted system.

It made me start thinking about an outdoor security system for the future once everything is up and running.

Every situation I encounter that's unpleasant from my business's point of view, I design a system and implement it so I avoid it in the future.Good luck!

They can spiral out of control quickly.Create scalable systems.

If your realtor doesn't have a sophisticated system for querying the MLS a lower-tech method is to have the agent do a full CSV dump of the MLS for SFR and send it to you after stripping out the non-public data columns.