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.

First things first...bubble gum, paper clip and a swiss army knife...if you can't MacGyver a solution with that, you're not ready to call yourself a handyman, oops I meant handyperson(aka Jedi Master, ruler of the world, smartest person in the room, boss, etc)Oh yeah, I forgot a twelve pack of your favorite cheap beer.Haha...really, a good Leatherman multi-tool is invaluable and will do most easy work, and can be part of your "everyday carry".$80And then it depends what you will do and what you like to do.

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I believe it's within the landlord's right to refuse as the contract is no longer valid; they are not terminating it prematurely.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

LL appears to sell vinyl planks as well for cheap but they all seem to require that you stick it to the subfloor and I rather not gum up my subfloor and have pieces of vinyl come up later anyway.

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).

However, I think a pop-top or scrape and rebuild would be premature. 

The gov seems going to artificially deflate CPI.These two are very premature early signs of recovery in tech and housing.