Take pictures, then match with invoices (i.e-if they charged you for a new hot water tank but the ones in the property clearly are dated)If there are Sec 8 or DSS tenants that possibly were placed there, you could check with the agencies and give them the addresses of the properties and see if they had been paying rent payments for those properties (note: they will NOT give you tenant info, but at this point you probably just want to know if there were tenants in there at all).  

Daniel, agree with some of the above.....has to pencil out.... in my market, unless you can add bedrooms/baths, you don't get much more rents, so unless you can get the legal egress windows in the basement (key issue in basements) you can't get a  bedroom, so I tend to agree on leaving it as is as rental--maybe market it as unfinished storage (people have lots of stuff), laundry, workshop for hobbyist, work out room, or bike storage for triathlete, etc.

This month they'll have a "Shark Tank" panel show where investors try and sell their projects to industry professionals (lenders, JV partners, etc..).  

I have seen pumpkin sales, Christmas tree sales, fruit stand, boiled peanuts, eyeglasses stand, carpet truck sales, landscaping storage,etc.If you put temporary things on the land to offset taxes then make sure it is not things that could environmentally contaminate the land such as a used car lot etc.

After 24 hours I would had to pay to have the dumpsters dumped.One thing you might do that might save you some time is to go with the tenant to rent a storage unit (you pay and tenant signs).

If they are moving out, the price of houses being sold will tank. 

Yes, we have basements, very manageable and great recreational/storage space.

Whereas when you do an individual property on your own, no one is tied to one another (agent, contractor, PM, etc.) so there's less at stake if one person tanks.

When someone does rent your place and they have appliances, you all have storage setup to store the extra appliances?  

In addition you have to have a large holding tank for the water and I have been told that those do not last forever either.