Stay the course.

Did you expect your tenant to pay and stay for the entire month of March?

If they want to stay it is their responsibility to contact you and pay their rent....serve notice immediately.

I use only Airbnb because it works super well in my market (we stay at 88-92% occupancy using just Airbnb, so I haven't even bothered to mess with VRBO).

He was still willing to stay but the temp in house was still dropping and no power, dark, and reasonable unsafe for a guest so I had him cancel. 

This is a buy and hold property and I plan on staying in it for at least 3-5 years.  

The third option, I stay in my house an hour away from work and continue to pay 400 bucks in gas and wear and tear on the car.

Still technically not an asset because the money is coming out of our pocket but its a start and its  our first home, we don't plan on staying here for long anyway.

Areas to stay away from?  

I would get calls and emails over the weekend from one tenant letting me know the other tenants had friends staying the weekend with them and they wanted me to know because they did not want to be assessed the additional water usage.