He said there was a power surge and got the lights working.

Tenants who want to break a lease will all of a sudden have a lot of problems and you're wondering what the heck is going on, but they usually won't just say they want out of the lease. 

However, if Freddie/Fannie suddenly stopped single family mortgage purchases for a while (super unlikely) that would be something that could have an immediate impact on housing prices, for example.

All of a sudden they are complaining about all kinds of maintenance issues, you end up in and out of the apartment a bunch of times with them complaining about pests and mold and funny smells or noise - you name it - instead of just asking if they can break the lease.So, I'd start there. 

She got my real email and then I suddenly got bombarded with email spam.   

While a sudden turnover may  not appeal to you, I would rather deal with that than lose the Section 8 payment and be dealing with tenants who would not pass my qualifications.  

You will end up with a series of milestones.Write down in a timeline fashion what it takes to reach these milestones and suddenly you have a set of tasks you need to tackle.Do those and before you know it you are crushing it.

Syracuse is somewhere in between those two, but is experiencing a sudden boom in values and interest thanks to Micron.

Multiply that times 2 rentals or 5, and suddenly an LLC is a good idea, but transferring property in may have tax issues.

Emotions and relationships suddenly come into play.