Most STR guests eat out in my experience.

As for the dogs - was thinking of a pet fee of $250 per animal.

Reason being that you’re 100% fully leveraged on a house and it will seriously eat at cash flow or make you negative.

The main level also has a large Living Room with gas fireplace, spacious eat in kitchen and a formal dining room.

Investing up here is a different animal.

@Jason Cook That tends to happen, areas with worse schooling and worse crime have higher cash flow simply because the appreciation in those areas have not happened as high as they did the in B and A areas.I think its important to realize that here, you will likely want a better property manager (so maybe this means to budget a higher percentage for that cause likely they cost more), budget more for vacancy if you consistently get bad tenants, and budget more for repairs and maybe those tenants will not take of the property as much.I personally invest in C areas because I think its the sweet spot between D areas which have too many problems and B areas which tend to have higher home prices (Which eat into my cash flow)

Until they experienced that first winter and found out the cost for repairs on heating units and roofs (capex) were eating all their profits and some. 

., tax breaks, appreciation) so overwhelming that the average SFH owner is willing to eat such losses?

Now a days, “I’m not scared to eat alone because I know what I bring to the table.”

And because the closing date has been unsure, he does not want to make commitments to leave since then he will have the cost for 2 properties.Just eat the 2 weeks of time needed to get the permit, and close on the original terms and then you can fix what you want with him gone.