I've been active as a buy-and-hold investor in Birmingham for an year now, and will echo @Rob Drum's sentiment that Birmingham is an excellent investment market.

She wants to hold on to it for sentimental reasons and not convert it into a rental.

I agree with your sentiment that the property isn't doing well for me at $450k, but when I use a calculator to examine what the price would need to be to make it cashflow, it doesn't seem fair to ask that price of the seller. 

But I didn't hold them for the appreciation - they have sentimental meaning to me.

I was nice, and we went to Goodwill together to try to find an item or two that had some sentimental value to her.Some people need to observe reality before they will accept it. 

For items of dollar or sentimental value, definitely remove those from the property.

Same sentiment was expressed during the industrial revolution or when computers took off or when internet exponentially expanded, etc. 

My mother took over the delinquent tax payments in order to save her childhood home for sentimental reasons.

Also, for what it's worth...I do agree with some of the sentiments that poster on the MMM forum said.

The sentiment is to wait a year when the markets could possibly shift more to buyers.