My solution is to sell, take the loss/rip the band-aid off in the next 2 years and consider it my college education. 

Renting is a automatic loss of $30K+ a year. 

I am a firm believer in plan for the worst and hope for the best, and I would much rather have a property rent much faster than much slower than I predicted.When owner look at the in and out numbers, they have to understand what is only a paper loss (depression) and what actual losses are.  

Not unless he has mitigating circumstances beyond his control (like job loss, or relocation by employer, etc.) 

To each his own. i too believe he is just attempting to intimidate us, but unfortunatly this is a situation we would rather not put to the test.i told my father we should take back the home, the tenant/buyer not only is behind in payments but has not paid the taxes on the location, hence why we are letting the property go. luckily we sold the home on a land contract and has paid off most if not all what my father originally paid for it. the home is worth maybe 20-35k in the area so it isnt a huge loss. sadly even if we chose to confront with an attorney, he would still see us working on the houses near by since we own several in the neighborhood.

Think of it as a obese person telling you about a new diet or work out program they are going to start "next week".

Unfortunately, many tenants don't seem to care one whit about anything extra that you do for them.If you want to pursue it, you can call in an HVAC professional to analysis the furnace and do a heat loss check to show where you are losing heat and may need additional insulation.

If anything, our market should be warm if not hot right now (low unemployment, significant loss of housing units after tornado) so I'm pretty surprised...

the pain is overretain good tenantsand just write-off the losses as 'bad debt'When gone, at least I can work on restoring the apt and get another good tenant.

With all that, do you have an example breakdown of cash flow (profit/loss)?