Also is sewer backup coverage a necessity?

You talk about the necessity of tenant consistency without acknowledging your own.  

Write a letter to YOUR tenant and the OWNER of the nearby condo, explaining the necessity of cooperation. 

However, if you are able to use the high cost of living to your advantage, as you can as a RE investor there and other ways as well, you can turn that frown upside down ... on the financial side, the trick for me was to arrange my financial affairs such that the higher the cost of living gets, the wealthier I get, but I will still be ok and wealthy if that doesn't happy ... then my happiness is only limited by the 405 freeway (joke, not really), which I only need to use if I want to leave the 6th happiest city, which would almost always be by choice and not necessity, again by design :) So, I guess my point is that you can engineer your lifestyle for maximum happiness no matter where you live, and that is a worthy metric to optimize around, but some places are definitely easier to do that than others due to the nice things you can't change IMO.How is Alaska treating you?

In real estate, money is always a necessity whether it be your own or somebody else's.

If they don't, tenants may not think of it as a necessity.

I get that it is a necessity to compete in the Seattle market, and the trend seems to be growing in the Tacoma market also, but man... it doesn't mean it is wise.

If you've done this long enough you know that sometimes necessity is the mother of invention :DI'll start.

To a regular tenant I could see it being less of a necessity.

I am really new to the rentals as an investment, instead of the rentals as a necessity to get to a new home.I'd really love to obtain a multifamily home in the next year, so input on these or single family homes would be solid.