He'll pull up other properties that are about the same size and built the same year that have sold for the last six months as a considerable comparison

It only makes your rent seem higher in comparison to other places.

They submitted applications, we screened them and then offered the property at rent greatly discounted in comparison to other similar properties we own in the neighbourhood.  

Since you purchased it in late 2015, you don't have a basis to say the utility bill was "extremely high" because you don't have year/year comparisons. $300 for 4 people sounds about right for NC in July, especially when there isn't a bill to pay.

@Nicole Cotrino - If curious for context/comparison, my cap is 45 minutes on the first call if it's a referral, 30 minutes if it's someone that called me out of the blue (so, yeah, saying "Fred said I should call you" will get you an extra 15 minutes), and BPers honestly have some interesting questions and puzzles to think through (which I enjoy) so I've been doing 45-60 minutes for you guys more or less since I joined.My goal during that 30 minutes or so is for that consumer to understand more about mortgages and how mortgage financing works than they learned in the previous 50 nervous hours on google, BP, wikipedia, from the last 3 homes they purchased, and so on.

The net income we're getting in comparison to a long-term rental is 2-3x better, and we have had little to no issue so far. 

There are few good ones in comparison to how many are out there.

Run a comparison of rental houses and apartments in your area.

I would say that you should be prepared to put in a lot more maintenance work in comparison to a place like dakota county (apple valley, eagan, etc.)

I understand it's not a priority compared to medical bills but usually pretty small by comparison.