If you aren't offering enough value right now to charge a quality rate work on what you need to do to keep the rates higher.

The most important qualities are sales ability, being uncomfortable (when marketing), being analytical, and being ethical.Its a sales job at the end of the day, so its great when its great.  

Being a local company, providing quality housing and great service is very important to us.

But in those better areas most of the turnover costs is just tenant damage and wear and tear which you will have anyway.That style of floor plan could be under a hundred K to build but watch the quality.So unless your build quality is high to justify the high total cost why not buy existing and just move the lots at a profit?

Tax lien, code violation, divorce, probate, driving for dollars, deceased : these are all generally high quality.

With a full renovation to condo-quality rentals, the numbers I'm seeing are in the 350k ballpark with an additional 6-9 months of vacancy, let's call it 400k required.

Just an update on my meeting with them:They wanted to charge around $25 per lead and couldn't make any guarantees on the quality of the leads I would receive.

The reason for this is that (1) the quality of tenant you get is far more important than a few extra dollars a month, and (2) this gets people in the door and putting in applications right away....hopefully more than one.

List it on the MLS as well, the best quality tenants use realtors. 

I also agree that not being a slumlord and having good PM are key ingredients in not being sued regardless of the way you go with it.