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.

If they are good reliable tenants, they will get caught back up

Unless there were overages on the job which need back up, no contractor is going to supply you with an itemized breakdown of all his receipts and materials.

Anyway, I would ask the companies to back up their numbers with real-life examples (on paper and real numbers).  

Maybe only one.b) I don't know what my backup exit strategy would be.  

One must ask themselves if they have the time for your property to go down and pick back up again in about 10 years?  

Great for a backup plan.

The way I see it is if the property taxes are so high to keep from getting ahead with your rental it doesn't pay much to keep it or look at that area to buy.We had a inner city 6 plex,, our taxes jumped from 5400 a year to 6800 ... on a 6 unit building this was after we had contested the tax hike that's 133.00 per apt per year or 95.00 bucks a month just for taxes.per unit.. we contested the increase hired a appraiser had a meet and look at with the city appraiser.. it knocked it down for a while but went right back up a year later.. 

I would much rather use that 250k or slightly less (as to have some backup cash) to purchase a larger 4-6 plex or higher depending on your market.

Area standard is What's left of the current roll and one full back up roll per bathroom.