Even with softening rents, there is still demand at the right price point.

Wall Street thought we were going to get six- eight rate reductions this year we’ve seen none so far and stagflation is setting in , the Fed is trapped , if they reduce rates now , inflation could catch on fire if they increase them again too much something in the economy will break I think we’re in this holding pattern for one to two years personally, I don’t claim to be a macro economic expert, but I do study it quite a bit and I’m not counting on or expecting rates to come down anytime soon and even if they do, they’ll just be small quarter-point rate hikes not enough to make a huge difference in cashflow, so ..I either hold and if they do decrease rates, there will  probably be another asset inflation bubble, which will increase my appreciation, or my cell and deploy the capital more wisely and look for some market softening and buy a good deal

The influx of new apartment units has softened the rental market most acutely in large multifamily, condos, and quadplexes.

Yes, it has softened lately, but outside of some niches (condos) I’d not call the US housing market a buyer’s market. 

As @Jordan Moorhead said, once rates soften a bit, buyer demand is ready to pick back up. 

Don't make excuses or apologize or try to soften the blow to protect their feelings.

none of them. get closer to a capital market and major city within 30 miles. all of these are too far. look at homestead or north of palm beach county, closer to tampa, etc not an hour away these are over delivered and new builds from tract builders are selling for less than 200 per sq ft right now in some of these markets rents have softened. there's no jobs or macro city that's driving these areas. these are softer markets for BTR than other ones. get more involved and directly contract with builders. miami dade county, even Orlando has better 

On the one hand, some people think things are peaking here and that pricing will soften (or worse) and yet this article states that here we are in one of the last affordable markets.

Those can be workable terms, considering as of this writing a conventional SFR 30 year rate is in the low 7%'s..high 6%'s. Often

One more was fairly bad (too many people living in the unit, causing a nuisance, etc.) and we just gave them notice to leave, and to soften the blow told them they could take the washer/dryer with them that came with the unit (we don't want those crummy old machines anyway - we don't include w/d with our units that have hook-ups).