The existence of this property kind of dances around the real problem. The quotes should be omitted entirely because in a block quote you already know where the

The existence of this property kind of dances around the real problem. The quotes should be omitted entirely because in a block quote you already know where the quotation begins and ends, additional punctuation adds no value, only noise. We wouldn't be trying to hang the leading quote off the side to get it out of the way (because it conveys information we already have and thus only gets in the way) if we just excluded it altogether.