Seems to me they figured out they made a wrong move prematurely.

Not all of them, but a high enough percentage that the fee offsets premature wear on flooring and odor related containment. 

It is premature and speculative and is not helping the conversation.

It's premature to claim that performing rental properties are affected, although the crushing of REIT's would suggest that there is a problem, at least with their business model income streams.

But that might be premature....you would probably want to talk to some lenders first to see what type of borrowing power you have.  

I believe it's within the landlord's right to refuse as the contract is no longer valid; they are not terminating it prematurely. 

He has a license to protect, and I understand that if I was actually planning on moving out prematurely that he wouldn't want to do business with me. 

You'll learn a lot from the ones that they, not you, made work.Alas, many new people, opportunity detectives who pre-maturely refer to themselves as investors, find a single property, try everything in the world to squeeze something out of it themselves, but fail to monetize it and eventually loose interest.It's still about attitude AND action.

Turns out no repairs were made and a tenant was placed in the home prematurely (no health and safety items thank heaven).

You can break up the progress payments small enough to solve almost any cash flow issue for the contractor (I pay my drywall crew daily) but until the material is on the property and/or installation is occurring, there isn't a need to pay premature invoices let alone writing a 33% check weeks before a job starts.There are too many contractors that start asking for big deposits at the end of the month for me to feel comfortable prepaying for services in large amounts.