You would have to sue the HOA in order to recover any funds after you've sold the condo, and you would probably have to demonstrate that their incompetence and/or malfeasance created the large budget surplus that you should be entitled to; the money wouldn't come from your new owner, it would just be a judgement against the HOA.

It's very close to what other agent models are and it's for simple fact there is no ready way to make big cut's to those fundamental expenses without suffering major risk or loss of service. 

Since you'd be looking to hold this property long term, look at what the property's cash flow and appreciation would potentially be 5-10 years down the road to help inform your decision.All that being said, if you feel confident that you can cover the maintenance, capex, vacancy loss, turn expenses, and leasing costs for a few years while you wait for the cash flow to improve, and you have enough risk tolerance to handle a potentially difficult tenant in the first few months which could lead to zero rent coming in during that transition to getting a new tenant in place, then it sounds like a solid deal to get into with $0 down.Lastly, I'll also caveat all of my statements above by mentioning that this all requires you to self-manage the property. 

I got out of the stock market in 2016 (pretty much) because it killed me to see $50,000 losses in one day.

If you drop your price $50, that's a loss of $600 a year, which is 50% less than you lose sitting vacant.

One tenant however, did refer to having their rent pro-rated by the number of days that the situation would last.There is a clause in both their leases that they are responsible to carry renters insurance to protect their personal belongings against fire, theft, flood, loss of use etc. 

Are you able to deduct passive losses against earned income, or do you have enough passive income to wash against the passive losses in order to deduct all of the interest?

If so, maybe...But a brokerage account implies securities, which implies potential loss. 

Depending on how much money you're making (which, if you're at a loss, may not be a ton), those trusts can sometimes cause more tax than going the standard LLC route and just paying the $800 in the first place.I'm not sure from your post if you're talking about income taxes that are owed, or the $800 LLC fee, which is more akin to a franchise fee in the terminology that you're using. 

Turns out the investor who purchased b4 me and started work was in a situation took the loss and has other profitable ventures. what's your all-in price?