Instead of hiring a property management company, I would prefer to work with a trustworthy individual that can also do regular maintenance and repairs. 

As far as I'm aware, I have to pay regular  income tax on the $ 500k.

It depends on your location, size of property, purchase price, nightly rate you can get, your upkeep of the property, and many other factors.If your unit shows well in photos and if you build up some good reviews in the first months, and your pricing is reasonable, it will be consistently rented.We have 3 of them, and all less than 1 year so the jury is still out, but in our experience so far, the startup and ongoing costs have been higher than expected, but all are getting good reviews, so in year 2 (now that they are stable) we expect to do pretty well.You have to make sure your town allows it, and you have to decide if you will manage it yourself and take on that extra work (communicating with the guests and people who will clean/make repairs) or if you will hire a property manager, which can be expensive, upwards of 25%.

You can bill him for clean up costs if you hire a contractor but not the gardens if you did not send him notices to maintain the property during their stay.

Listening to that podcast regularly will give you a great grasp of what multi family investors around the country are experiencing. 

If you intend on managing from afar, I would recommend a great cleaning person that is reliable and that you can trust to go after the check outs to do inventory and clean the place up.

@Salvatore Giancolai had this kind of behavior lately with my tenants, in other country (not U.S), but you need to be very clear like you did with the letter and very creative if you can speak with them over the phone or with your Lawer and do some tricks that can cause them to go out, by the law of course.Every one can agree with me that no one wants to be “marked” , because rent payment.Your credit score damage and a lot of other things.For both of them if they won’t be pay this , it will be almost impossible to find a place to rent.This is how i solved it in my country.And try to find more “regular” tenants next time..After i signed a contract with single mother with 4 kids that didnt open the door for me for more then mouth and did so much damage to the apartment ..I learned the best lesson in the world.Hope you will be fine , remember from every situation with tenants we learn something new.

There is a REIG group here that meets regularly.

Especially developers, rehabbers, the types that take old dilapidated properties and fix them nice.Also bad tenants (gangs, hoarders, the types that party all day and don't keep neighborhood clean stay FOREVER)  This is why the rent controls don't work.

A meeting was had and Sanitation did a major street/Alley cleaning and the cops have have started driving the Alley's more.Don't pay them and don't do anything to antagonize them.