The practical rational is to follow your good advice: Let it go and one year from now you forget.

This is a real-estate forum, not a relationship forum, and the people here are all passionate real-estate investors who are good at rationalizing investing.

Those typically rent around 1300-1400/mo and you can purchase them in decent neighborhoods like in Wake Forest for around 180k thus giving you the best cost / income ration you can get in current markets.Townhomes are great too and better for a lower starting cost, but you have to watch out for HOA, those can be pretty high.Not sure about driving for dollars, unless you have lots of time and enjoy driving a lot.

Now, don't forget, diminish, or rationalize them from this point forward. 

Whenever this question is raised the poster always seems to rationalize the argument based on the outstanding mortgage balance instead of the ARV; this is the wrong metric.

I think that for me REI is the most rational and understandable forms of investing, and it is about as interesting as it gets!

I think can make more rational decisions, ie.

The IRR requires us to do this, and this is important since this requires us to rationalize every step of the way. 

What your friend may have been trying to explain was your debt to income ration.

After we purchased, we decided to do a bit more in repairs than we planned, but we rationalized it by likening it to insurance to protect our investment.Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?