Unless your mechanically handy your maintenance costs will eat you up.  

Meaning me and my partner  would have to eat that loss and come out of pocket to augment the rent to pay the full mortgage for at least a decade or so .

Actually, in this hypothetical case, you'd be better off eating the $19k lien, tax lien, or whatever it is, 25 years of daily dog walking sucks!

However, since its the attorneys that order Title for their client, the attorney has to eat the cost of Title's work if the deal doesn't close.Similarly, I try to manage client transactions to minimize exposure to costs. 

Maybe also combine that with moving job market where people don't have 20-30-40 year company careers, but need to change jobs every 2-3 years now and  change locations with perhaps 401k cashouts, or more expenses that eat up savings between jobs, and moving expenses between jobs.

That's going to eat time, and that's too devastating.

Don’t the closing costs from buying and selling an investment property eat up all the appreciation (and mortgage principal paydown)?

Desperate people will eat it up though thinking it will help.

That’s why STVR managers don t rely on property appreciation to be successful. “ You can t eat appreciation”.Professional , small business owners and high income investors don t buy into syndications where syndicators dock them with high front end expenses.

HOA and management eat most of my profits...The house has a 7.25% interest rate.