If your going to loose you can take a loss or re fi into 7-8 percent dscr loan and hold for 5 years or so that is what I am seeing with the prepayment.

If you're still using "rules" to bid on properties , especially in this price range, you're destined for a loss.   

Since real estate for you will be treated as a passive investment, you won't be able to offset your personal income with losses.

As far as deducting all those losses (repairs and maintenance) - you may be about to learn something new here as well.

Some of these include:1) Your product/value proposition2) Marketing/Management/Customer Success3) Systems, Automations, Efficiency4) LocationTo me, #1 has the biggest weight on the success. 

However, there's obviously no guarantee in what they'll find... so - how do folks mitigate the risk of the 2k-5k loss when looking to purchase a new property for a plan like this?

If this is an accepted practice in North Carolina then something is definitely off.It seems like an awfully underhanded way to finance a potential vacancy loss using the outgoing tenant.

If there is no solution other than "you take the risk", it seems this would be a death-toll to selling houses at auctions absent a huge bucket of cash to cover losses if they happen.  

If the loss is manageable, you might consider taking the loss and moving on.

Absorption rates of competitive office space may not immediately reflect quarterly total job gains or losses, but it is prudent to consider longer-term economic and demographic performance as influential upon current occupancy levels.