If the deal goes south and you have next to zero money in the deal, selling a short sale or walking isn't as risky for you since you aren't losing much.

Lose the holier than thou attitude; this is personal finance not a religion3.

They’re so excited about the SDE or the margins or the multiple, they lose sight of the bigger picture.Business is personal.

WE are seeing this in the Portland market.Montgomery Park the largest office complex in the state that sold about 7 years ago for 250 mil just got bought ( after no one bid it at foreclosure) for 25 mil by Menashe family. its over 1 million sq ft.. dont think you can lose on something like that. reminds me of the buys in 2010 in some markets were sfr's were selling for 1/4 of replacement costs..

Who wins and who loses?

I wasn’t prepared to lose so much of my savings as carrying cost basically I paid for the tenants to live there for 3 months + my own living expenses in that time.

You have some people in here who are cool with and celebrate losing over $1,000 a month.

Your income isn't high enough for it to make sense as a rental and the closer you get to your residence limit the greater pressure you will have to sell it before losing your exclusion in whole or part. 500k right now can make $15k per year income with zero maintenance or tenant risks. 

People like to use HELOCS especially now, if they have a very low interest rate first position mortgage, in order to tap into that equity without losing the low interest.

Cash flow is the buffer between keeping my property long enough to get rich and losing the property in foreclosure.