If you are going to invest in this market you'll need to learn what is what as I see out of state investors get screwed over all the time because they end up comparing apples to oranges by mistake.To give yourself a feel for the market I recommend checking out The Ultimate Guide to Grading Cleveland Neighborhoods before buying anything from Zillow or Trulia or something like that. 

Doing this has significantly cut down on bad apples and I don't have people getting pissed at me for telling them they don't make enough money or we don't accept people with evictions.

The MTM contract gives YOU flexibility to part ways if it's not working out, like in cases where you have a bad apple that is driving all the other good tenants out. 

If you research and they like say apples I’d cut some slices and put the peanut butter on them to avoid a mess or whatever.

I like to change things around (such as modifying the ROE in your case) so I can compare apple to apples.

That is a cardinal sin.You should look at marketing the same way you look at the contents of a fruit salad.In a fruit salad if the only ingredient in the bowl were apple slices one would have a hard time calling it a fruit salad and only those who liked apples would enjoy the presentation.

Just be very mindful about sales pitches and other bad apples in the free community where unfortunately in this world, there are scammers everywhere.

So believe it or not it's the "Apple" of Real estate at this point .

DC is a city that is HUGELY in favor of tenants over landlords and if you get a bad apple you can be in a really, really tough spot with little reasonable recourse on your part.

PSF does not do a great job of going apples to apples on houses that need completely different repair scopes.Pick up J Scott's book, or "National Repair and Remodel Estimator 2015" big book to learn what materials should be costing you.