I'm surprised not many on here do this as it seems an excellent way to accelerate. 

This hasn't happened yet where I have 2 empty at the same time but it is about to at the end of this month.I have slowed down my cap ex savings a little since this post. 

Its going to be a slow painful trickle.  

Maybe he was mad that the pace you went was too slow?

My gut feeling is that if YOUR emails and calls have been un-retunred or they have been slow to respond, the tenant is likely telling the truth.  

The courses were a little dry and slow at times, but overall they were effective.

The area just outside of the capitol in NE OKC is starting to see some slow improvement.

Simply attending meetings and being surrounded by people who are doing the things you want to do will accelerate your education.Check out http://www.reapsweb.com/  http://reiawa.com/  and @Troy Fisher has a Meetup Group.  

Use the cash to control some rental properties first.I've done tens of thousands of deals and the one where I made the biggest mistakes was my last primary residence.Get yourself on a slow consistent mailer schedule where you are reviewing at least 10 deals per weekend.  

The main reason will simply be to accelerate building my portfolio and getting to that income that I'm looking for.In retrospect I would not do a whole lot of things differently.