If you were in their shoes, wouldn't you wish you'd have chosen a floating rate loan and saved $2 million? 

If I were in your shoes, I would get a better contract or review your current contract and see what is covered and what is not covered and require your property management company to require contracts for ALL work done to your property.

@Jason Lewis If I was in your shoes I would try and find a multi family property that was distressed enough that you could add value by rehabbing it, but not so distressed that it wouldn’t qualify for FHA owner occupied financing.

However, I was just distressed seller myself, so I know what it's like to be in their shoes.

Try to walk a day in his shoes and you will experience your scenario every day.

Ever been on a horse with horse shoes on asphalt?

You stepped out of your house, turned to walk toward the municipality center, and when you got to the corner every week there was a stall selling sheets and blankets at cut prices but really quietly shilling unstamped illegal counterfeit cigarettes right outside the convenience store there. 

Out of the 50 or 60 books on business and investing that I have listened to in the past 3 years I prescribed more to Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, Rich Dad’s Cash Flow Quadrant and Why ‘A’ Students Work for ‘B’ Students, Shoe Dog, Pitch Anything, Sell or Be Sold, The 10X Rule, The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing, and the classic The Richest Man in Babylon.

Please keep in mind that many entrepreneurs and investors leverage stable, well-paying W-2 jobs while growing their portfolios and businesses (read the excellent Phil Knight autobiography Shoe Dog for a great example of this.)  

If I was in your shoes I would look for something that needs a lot of cosmetic work.