She eats a pretty good quality kibble, but all kibbles deteriorate pretty quickly, I think.

Think of CAPEX in terms of deteriorating property that will need replacement.

Brandon did a blog post on this about a year ago: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2012/10/21/are-you-a-slumlord/Here's Wikipedia's definition along with Brandon's take:Wikipedia defines “Slumlord” as “a derogatory term for landlords, generally absentee landlords, who attempt to maximize profit by minimizing spending on property maintenance, often in deteriorating neighborhoods.”Brandon went on...The truer definition of slumlord, I believe, is “a derogatory term for landlords, generally absentee landlords, who attempt to exploit tenants and maximize profits by refusing to spend on property maintenance, often in deteriorating neighborhoods.”

That would obviously be even better to the tune of a couple hundred bucks a year.This plan assumes there are no major capital expenses coming due and that the value of the property doesn't continue to deteriorate (sounds like this is a real possibility).  

We will be very happy to see them leave, since the relationship has deteriorated completely since they moved in.However, we are a bit worried that if they cannot move out by Aug 31 (they are building a house and the builder is supposed to be done by Aug 15, but deadlines are not met sometimes in construction...) then they will say that the Aug 31 was a typo and per the contract the notice should be effective by end of September.

I would agree as I stated before that if you have a fixed-rate mortgage, that debt will deteriorate due to the devaluation of the currency.

So if I’m stuck holding it a minimum of 4 months, how do I minimize the cash bleeding and any vacancy based deterioration.

Any significant difference between single family and multi-family deterioration? 

And if you go East of 51st and North, the area starts deteriorating as well.  

While the rest of the world has deteriorated, decade after decade, the USA has thrived.