Bottom line being that I bought them with a negative cash flow and with a tremendous amount of equity, but I had a very precise exit strategy in cashing out my equity before the negative cash flow ate my lunch.

When the lake started to recede and the salt water level intensified until it killed off all the sea life and slowly ate away at paint, metal, wood or anything else in its way, the Great Salten Sea became an abandoned ghost town and refuge for motorcycle gangs, drug runners, illegal's and just about any/all undesirables that could survive there. 

I know a lot of people like duplexes because they feel when 1 unit is vacant you have rent from the other, but what happens when both ate vacant?

Rehabbing for the first time was extremely frustrating as I made many mistakes, simple rookie mistakes that ate up time....

We ate out less than a dozen times; I sewed my own maternity clothes; we only left town once (to get a check to mail back to Sallie Mae).

If you lie to the lady in the lobby and tell her the pop machine ate 50 cents, that won't fall under this jurisdictio That's why I said, keep your mouth shut!

If you follow everything to a tee you are going to spend every second of your time working on SEO.  

Also if you sell and then buy a new home to live in I believe this is unlikely to get you more money for a REI than a refinance because the new purchase will not have rent used in the loan calculations (because you will not be getting rent but will be living there), the payments will be higher because of the increased property taxes and seeing you would be reducing your equity you would once again be stuck with PMI (note ate 75%LTV and 80% LTV there is no need for PMI) and there could be tax consequences if you do plan to buy a less expensive home (do you want to downsize your home?).

I once ate lunch at the Flagstop Cafe in Boerne, TX.

Sure, we get phone calls ate 3 in the morning because a kitchen light blew out, but that is very rare and even though I get a little angry it is still a nice feeling to know that my tenants have the ability to resolve problems when they get no satisfaction from managers.My wife and I carry separate cell phones for our tenants to call us.To manage our properties, our lease agreement is 24 pages that consists of all our rent payment and eviction policies.