I may be beating a dead horse here, but after house hacking 2 SFR's in Reno NV (somewhat of a similar market) and getting to $1mil in assets by 24, I'm constantly reminded that time goes by no matter what you do. 

I bought/and sold a property there and its dead dead right now.

Neglected exteriors, garbage outside, dead trees, broken driveways, DNS citations... and our local media picks up on it and they give landlords a bad name, which shapes public opinion and is starting to impact policy..

They were dead on as shown by CO2 levels recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii.

You seem to want to discount that, but if you do, you're dead wrong and that's going to be to your detriment.When the agent is building a list of properties to show their clients, you would have to be spectacularly ignorant of human nature to think that offering little or nothing to a buyer's agent is going to result in your property getting equal exposure.Believe whatever you want, but you don't get to write your own rules.  

Maybe Phoenix is just a bad market to do what you want to do, which is try to get your sleeping/dead equity back to work somewhere else.

The key to protection is to have the minimum amount of equity lying dead in a property to avoid attracting lawsuits.

I would not be caught dead in Daytona with a wood frame house, for example. 

I wouldn't think anything of the dead numbers or non responsive landlords.

You are now dead in the water.