While landlords hate to drop rents, and resist it like the plague, make no mistake that during a downturn your income will fall even if you don't drop rents.Vacancies will increase, credit loss from non-paying tenants will increase, eviction costs will increase, you'll have to offer concessions like free rent or temporary discounts to attract tenants and keep the property full. 

You are still building up equity though each year with potential for appreciation and in future years it will begin to cashflow as more equity is built.Here's an example from one of my deals on the calcs I ran to measure monthly cashflow:Purchased for $306000 Rental Income $1600 - after 5% vacancy - Net rental income = $1520Monthly mortgage payment $1029.65Maintenance reserve $50Condo fees $303Property taxes $115.25Insurance $35========Net cash flow ($12.90)Properly estimating rent is harder to do as you may drop lower than you had planned to attract quality tenants so I use conservative rental numbers.

I would check for things that attract pests.Pests, plumbing leaks, are my biggest concerns.I had a tenant once who let water remain on the bathroom floor.

CMBS and Life Insurance debt may now be more attractive than Agency which is hard to believe.Seeing that the vast majority of apartment deals are financed via the two GSEs this will have downstream effects on the market, especially deals that are pending but haven't rate locked and for near future transactions.What are you seeing?

This ends up attracting longer term guests.

@Jonathan Guerrero it depends on the quality of property you have and the tenants you are trying to attract in my opinion. 

Make sure that your lease is triple net and pushes repairs to the tenant.Be advised, they can require some extensive tenant improvements depending on what type of tenant you attract.

The income makes the price look very attractive.

Some things I plan to do to attract the tenant (business person) I’m looking for: adding a home office, charging extra $5 for the 2nd person, and adding somemagazine subscriptions to financial news.

Were you looking to attract college kids for the other units?