One of my tenants quit paying rent almost a year ago.

When you say pull your money out of it, would you be paying cash for the property?

The simplicity of the “I’ll take the number 5, with extra insulation and interior paint on the side” approach was appealing.

Today, we've returned to reality, which is, you've got to work vacation rentals for them to really pay off. 

But imagine you don't pay cash but rather borrow so your 5k cash/closing-down payment to buy a 100k STR, then in year 1 it rises 2k - only a paltry 2%, but you make a 40% profit as you are levered 20:1, and that beats the best year for stocks ever. 

Now you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.

Like do some cleaning job, contacting maintenance people, knowing how to pay water bills etc. these are all the basic work when you become a landlord and you need to know how to manage your property first.

The plan is to Refinance after a year, applying what is pulled out, back to the mostgage to pay it off as quick as posble.

They also bother our HVAC guy to do general handyman tasks when he is there and I am paying him hourly for HVAC services only. 

Tenant doesn’t pay their rent…unpredictable cash flow.