I ended up combining some of your suggestions, the tenant agreed, and I hope helping her works out.Here is what I did:- Did not accept Last month rent as December payment.- Offered to accept half of Decembers payment along with a late fee pending from last month (her first late payment) as well as a late free for December.- The other half of the rent would be payed in two additional payments, one in January, the last one in February.I am hopeful that she understand the flexibility we have applied to help her out and that she do her part as agreed.Thank you for all your great comments and suggestions.

Most of the conventional lenders have a product offering that combines a mortgage and HELoC together to enable you to dray out up to 80% of the equity from a property.

:)Historically, real estate has tracked inflation, so holding real estate for a long time is more of a hedge against the decreased value of the dollar than it is an automatic wealth builder.Of course, when you combine time with all the other factors you mentioned, that's where the money comes from...

I came home for lunch and had unknown and extremely rare condition in my spinal cord bleed.

I have two rental properties free and clear of any mortages or liens with a combined value of $90,000.

This is all discussed with the tenant prior to lease signing.I'll rarely post a Pay or Quit if a good tenant is late occasionally, and pays the late fee.

Elevating the property -- this is technicaly feasible, but rarely economically so.

These guys are living on the edge and a crew chief who treats them nice is rare.

That's nearly 10%, it's pretty rare to find T/Bs with that much cash available, and on top of that you're dealing with first-time buyers who aren't used to doing or paying for repairs.A quick ~3% assignment fee sounds like a good idea.

That's one of my favorite RE investing books ever and rarely see it on people's reading lists.