The only extra pay for guests is the surf-rider.

Taking the loss now is preferable to paying out monthly for the privilege of being a landlord.

You pay for what you get remember LOCATION , LOCATION! 

This influx of high-paying jobs (averaging $60 per hour) is expected to draw a significant number of professionals to the area, boosting demand for housing and various services.

It's debt you'd still have to pay back, but at least you will not touch one of those two amazing interest rates. 

For example, they have not sent us the rent they owned us for the last three months, and here is paperwork to show it is not in our account, here is the contract with them stating they would pay on this day each month, and here is the title of the house in my LLC/name to show you we own the property too.

This is obviously much better than $1,400 per month.On top of that, you will now get 2x the depreciation write-off so your taxes should go down.On top of that, you will now get 2x the appreciation when real estate price go up.On top of that, your tenants are helping you pay down the loan, initially at about $100/mo for both properties, which gradually gets better and better.On top of that, you now have more units so if one or two goes vacant, you have more renters covering the losses of the vacant units.If you want to keep these properties, I would do a cash-out refi and go buy more rental real estate.

Wondering about paying through an escrow agent or something similar 

Please see the rough numbers below :Tear down house price 350k,Construction cost 165 sqft * 2 build=627k too much for the land unless your exit is 3 million. don't reinvent the wheel. no single family home builder is paying 300k for land. that's miami florida prices where I live. we buy land 50k and under in Columbus Ohio. keep land at less than 10% of after built value.

North side Chicago I have never even had to give a tenant a late fee and none of the tenants I have placed for clients have ever given them issues either, properly picked people pay like clockwork on autopay.