If you take an application fee and you had a prior applicant pending and they qualified,, and they paid the deposit and signed everything,, then if you had a back up application waiting you'd return the funds to the applicant and not run the form.

@Jason Bott Sewer backup does not cover this policy.

Just have a backup story ready.  

if the house dosent meet reserve, it will go back up for auction.  

The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 before Katrina (April 2000) to an estimated 230,172 after Katrina (July 2006) — a decrease of 254,502 people and a loss of over half of the city’s population.(1) By July of 2015, the population was back up to 386,617 — 80% of what it was in 2000.So apparently once a large disaster hits an area, its safe to assume 2 things: 1, people leave en mass. 2, it takes them a long time to come back.I'm not sure the Houston area will ever be what it once was.

Luckily we are frugal Francenes and can afford to get the rentals back up and running pretty quickly, but I'll be more broke than I've ever been.   

I ran into something similar with a flip that had an oil burner, and the oil soot was circulating in the house due to a bad burner.

I am also planning to head out there as soon as the roads open back up to see for myself. 

Does the PM have a documented move out inspection with photos to back up the charges?  

Like you said though, if they place a tenant with no rental history or who's guarantor family member has an unstable rental history, or if the required qualifications and investigations are sub-par, IE the PM didn't bother to investigate rental history beyond the applicant's current residence or didn't take into account that they just started a new job in a different industry making 3x what they previously did for the past 10 years - then those are reasons to be upset.But yet again, if a landlord has to take the time to deeply examine an applicant beyond the PM saying, "yes, the applicant meets our agreed-upon criteria and here is the backup", you are working with the wrong PM because that's a big part of what a PM does.