I've seen people in my market lock thinks up at fairly ridiculous prices, cancel 90% of the time, and that 10% of the time make a small finder's fee. 

From the ridiculously high cost of qualified/competent GC labor in the Bay Area, of course! 

Then, once we have a signed deal at some ridiculous price, and we get the actual financials (probably limited to leases, bank statements and LLC tax returns, in this case), come back and try to “retrade” the price (ask for lower)?

(If I remember correctly, Jay Hinrichs posted his contract where he states explicitly that he might make "a ridiculous assignment fee" and has no problem telling a seller he might make twenty grand selling their house.

Of course not, so point is, I don't put anything past our state or the Feds for that matter to pass ridiculous laws and regulations.Thanks again for your point of view and I agree having the right title person would be key, assuming it is still ok to do that here.

Even though I've been doing this for years, with highly positive results, I feel that no one else I know is doing this and am beginning to get frustrated because I see such incredibly obvious, easy, ridiculously high value rewards to doing this for such a low effort! 

I think it is ridiculous to pay a professional to take pics for you, unless you have very high end units.

Baltimore City can have ridiculously high water bills from what I've seen/read/heard . . not sure about the county . . .

for me, i'd only take PM recommendations from other seasoned investors in the area who have a 'like' tenant base and 'like' sized properties to what you're about to buy.my partner, who managed our property, put in a LOT of work each month chasing people to pay. we always collected, but the amount of effort it took to get people to pay the small fraction for which they where responsible was ridicules. section 8 mentality is something you should understand before buying a building positioned for that tenant base.all this said, we were able to get above market rents with section 8 ...but we worked for it ;-) check with the local section 8 office to see how much they pay so you have a benchmark.i'd underwrite this one conservatively.

I was ridiculed at the RE clubs in 2006/2007 for buying silver at 10 dollars an ounce instead of real estate.