I'd hate for a temporary dip in the quality of the tenant pool to be giving my landlord "spidey sense" false alarms on account of taking an extra month or two to fill a unit.

We charge 10% and we pride ourselves on quality service.

Nailed it, the great moderation was extremely poor Keynesian economic policy.

They were not terrible, some people would call them C minus, and it wasn't even that much about financial considerations at the time (appreciation was not a thing back then in Milwaukee) but just not what I wanted to own or manage, so I sold them to them tenants - after quite a bit of financial coaching to get them to qualify for a loan.My standard advice is always to buy the best quality property you can afford.

I enjoy interacting with other investors and helping people do better, not measure the quality of questions.

I've stuck with the tried and true reasons I've heard to keep my search ranking high (quality photos, stellar reviews, updates to my listing) and that helps but in slow season, when I'm not willing to cut my rates as much as some of my competitors, it can be a ghost town.  

@Travis Boyd The quality of the neighborhood will affect the cap rate to be used.

While I don't object to spending money to do one's due diligence, I don't know if $500 is called for when you can get very high quality syndication groups/meetups/information for free.

Another "perfect storm of uncontrollable events".With both failed deals they are pointing blame on poor performance from the companies they hired to manage the property and to do the renovations, which raises a few questions:1) how can/should LPs perform due diligence on these to be hired companies?

The #1 reason people are poor, is lack of skills, knowledge, wisdom.