If you increase rent by more than $100/month your chances of losing the tenants go up.

Can you lose the car payment? 

I have also read about buying lower priced $50k properties all cash but that seems to lose the value of leverage and thus give smaller cash flows.I've been reading a lot about HELOCs and from advice I'm reading, I gather to really only use a HELOC as a quick temporary purchase vehicle since technically the lender could call the balance due at anytime. 

I lose about $100/month after expenses, etc.I just rented it out to a really good couple in May.

It's very exciting to think about doing real estate, but it's super easy to lose a lot of money if you don't know what you're doing!

This makes so much sense, especially the emphasis on building relationships.

The fact that he was to lose $15,800 in free money.

Well, we'd be negative cashflowing roughly $500 /mo on the "hope" we'd find a renter for only 6-8 months who would do ZERO damage to the property so we can "hopefully" sell again next year when we "hope" the market is better and "hopefully" don't lose all our equity like we did this year. 

I've often said I'm in a 30+ year abusive relationship (with the Bills) and if any psychologist looked at it on paper they would lose their minds...

My personal opinion is unless you can afford to lose your money, you're better off investing where you KNOW the local markets, neighborhood, where schools are, what areas to avoid, etc.