@Chaim Rosenstadt  I'm assuming the underlying real estate assets are located in the US...If a US citizen is living abroad in a country that taxes worldwide income of residents, they should be checking if their resident country will allow a tax credit for US tax paid on the US based rental real estate property.The US foreign tax credit system is designed to provide relief for foreign tax paid on foreign source income. 

Known problems are:Sewage pipe needs to be snaked every 6 months, might need a new systemThe existing tenant was described as a "pain in the ***".

It's also a relief to know that it's somewhat common to hit by larger expenses in the first year.

If you find any 3-prong outlets without grounds, or a 2-prong outlet that's worn out, replace them with new 2-prong outlets.If you can't figure out which outlet is first on the circuit, or if the circuit is a pain in the butt in some other way, you can also get a GFCI built into a circuit breaker that can be installed in the panel. 

@Javier Perez That is a big pain switching it out everytime you have a turnover and your are basically asking for claims.

Honestly, keeping an open line of communication tends to remove some of the pain-points of the landlord-tenant relationship but it seems like this tenant is choosing to be difficult.

It was a hard time to find a job and it was even harder to willingly attempt to do something that felt equally as painful as walking to a hard-labor rock-mining camp and asking to be shackled.

There is a government list (which is what I am thinking your mother-in-law used) called the SAM System for Award Management that holds a list specific to disaster relief.

I am absolutely not a pro-airbnb especially since this year my airbnb share of income has gone down to 30% ish and had several damage issues where they were a pain to deal with to get some compensation.  

Yup, another lesson from pain.