Any full-cycle deals?

Very few are one cycle renters.All you need fur marketing is Zillow.com.  

Are you saying that if someone has the aptitude to figure out, as an example, that a solenoid valve is what is causing a furnace to not go consistently through its startup cycle, and the three people that come in and 2 recommend a full system replacement, and it happens that the third, (or the owner, myself, or OP) figured out the $30 part that failed early and can take the half hour to fix it, you would say that person who didn't replace the whole system for no extra value, made a bad investment?

The first is market cycles, the second is investor psychology. 

So it's only natural that there will be differences of opinion.As a conservative investor, the things that are important to me are factors like full real-estate cycle experience with little to no money lost, high skin in the game, conservative loan to value debt, no floating-rate debt, competitive fees and promotes, no juicing of returns with nonreal estate or junk-grade real estate debt etc.  

It’s a sick cycle but it’s where we are now.

He sold the rest over the last couple of years.Looking back at his results - he has done so well due to (1) buying relatively early in the rising cycle, (2) Buying slightly under market,  and (3) buying in the areas that appreciated very fast.

WHY put yourself through this cycle?

I have bought at all points of the cycle and over 5+ years always come out way ahead.

It's the cycle of things.