My experience has been that even if there is a shift in housing, even if it is as bad as the 2008 crash, that while house values may drop (and will eventually come back), people will still need to rent and as long as you are in a good market, and your properties are managed by a good team, you should continue to make cash flow. 

Even though it’s been a very unpleasant experience, I still want to avoid burning bridges.

While a few thousand in legal bills and fines allowed me to avoid having that appear on my record as a criminal conviction, it was a rather unpleasant experience and I lost a lot of sleep those weeks.       

I thought this was just another name for the impending real estate crash or something along those lines lol

I did that until i realized that until the market crashed, which was conveniently synchronized with the crash of my tolerance for speaking with people. 

(Paid $100K down payment)  Market then crashed .

If your eyes are focused on the Side View and you NEVER look through the windshield, you crash your car.The Side View is the Cash Flow NOW.

Also,  I looked at the data in 2009 when there was severe speculation and crash in real estate, and rents for my studio were at 16000aed. 

I want to avoid unpleasant surprises at all costs.

We are working on pruning the portfolio we build during the last crash, trimming (selling) off outliers that don’t fit well in our criteria and using the proceeds to pay down debt on those that do.