They may see you as a reminder of their financial troubles and you have the opportunity to change their mind into seeing you as a solution to their financial troubles.

As for the pee smell, start with a bleach water solution that will usually kill the smell. 

My apologies in advance if a similar post with my question has been posted before and some of you have already posted an answer/solution to this.

The Power Brothers came up with a risky, but creative solution that became very successful.

As far as direct mail goes, I'd just touch them with a professional piece that offers a solution to their problem, with some attempt at differentiation (why pick you?).

The solutions might be to give the tenants the option of doing a a lease reassignment.

Smaller landlords can be more flexible on their criteria [or don't screen at all], whereas usually the owner of the management company will lock the employees in to a specific decision tree to avoid FHA suits.

Most agents find that Re/Max has the best solution for experience agents and still great resources...I started with a small boutique brokerage, and got 0 training and I floundered for 6 months before I started to really get how it all worked...don't make the same mistake I did - in retrospect, I wasted time and lost deals because of it.

I spent time after that in software selling big data solutions most recently.  

Then there are turn-key solutions.