They routinely reject loans that are perfectly legit simply "because".

We routinely do $100k short sales with the POF over $1M.

Another post implied that you might be "black listed" if you routinely made extremely low offers to banks.I'm going to look at a few REO's tomorrow (several on the market for well over 100 days).

I personally do not feel routine cleaning should fall on the owner.  

The owner may or may not want to stay with the management company or like their choicesSome up-charge routine maintenance costs by some percentage 10% (some are up front about it and others are not).

I turn on the Greek news regularly and see places that I know well going up in flames, desperate rioters throwing Molotov cocktails at the police, EU and Greek officials routinely making surreal pronouncements and projections about the economy for one politically-expedient reason or another that has no basis in fact.Bad things happen.

But, some of the basic books that do analysis of deals will hit most of the routine rules and situations.Jon

Geologists such as myself routinely perform pre-purchase inspections of properties to mitigate these risks.

Young people seem to have done the best with broad stock exposure and viewing a downturn as a "sale" and just keep on the 401k investment routine and not stress about paper losses for money you don't need for 20+ years.You could also cut back your 401k contibutions to just get the match and save for a down payment on RE....just don't spend it!

You have 4 that need to be off your mind and on a routine. #2&6 is where your daily attention should be.