My experience in NYC taught me that when the City starts screwing around with tightening up rent control, the smaller non-controlled properties shoot up even more--less supply, more demand, higher rents. 

No question..... 30 year fixed.... you can ALWAYS make payments like its a 15 year if you want to pay it off faster..... but it doesn't work the other way if things tighten up and making the higher payments on a 15 year gets dicey for whatever reason.....The view point of having the place paid off and now "look at my huge monthly income from it", is very misleading... yeah you aren't paying interest anymore, but you are essentially getting bigger checks each month because you are paying yourself back for all the $$ you used to pay it offWhen you had a mortgage you got a check of $500 each month...... now that you quickly paid off that 100k house, you get a check of $1000 a month..... but where do you think that "extra" $500 came from?

Or perhaps poor health or financial strain has resulted in substantial deferred maintenance, making it a difficult property to sell on the retail market--he has a problem.

More credit tightening risk than an aw shucks I missed a drop of another 25bps IMO.

Tighten up your analysis and then comeback to the forums with specific questions about what you're having trouble wit.

Lending tightens during recessions, but banks always lend. 

Economic upheavals usually effect to top and bottoms of the market - Class A becomes too expensive to justify when people are tightening their belts and Class C residents are often those effected the most by layoffs, wage stagnation and are less likely to be able to weather hard economic times.

Inventory is tightening back up

Yes, it also strained by capital reserve but fortunately it's still substantial.  

What happens here are that builders get nervous in a downturn and lenders start tightening up on what they're owed.