i know your not asking this but to break the pattern, it is best for your mental health to be hands off arms length from your short term or long term tenents, weather they are 12 month lease tenants, friends relatives, sympathy to strangers, you should give to property manager or a manager who will do short term monthly rental, and separate yourself and remove emotion. ps., in florida now, you have an unlawful detainer action and there is still a due process, attorney is needed and there is no throwing someone out on your own, that is not going to happen or you'd lose alot more than you lost now. we buy properties like this and pay for the attorney.  

Mary Jo, Chris, Heather and everyone starting out, should you still decide to continue I bid you the best of luck in the emotional, social and spiritual struggles that comprise the entirety of buy-and-hold real estate investing.Just in case you are still wondering, while your mileage may vary, my tenants are harmful, suppressive, hypocritical, cultic, meretricious, jargon-spouting, harassive, restrictive, destructive, greedy, mendacious, violent, clueless, mind-numbing, criminal, satanic, spastic, secretive, barratrous, demented, loathsome, crazy, evasive, narrow, splenetic, bilious, belligerent, deceitful, cowardly, malignant, devious, stifling, unethical, opportunistic, uncaring, clumsy, clueless, tasteless, malevolent, avaricious, diseased, unsympathetic, insane, contemptible, self-righteous, dim, self-entitled, dystopic, grim, vengeful, idolatrous, flagrant, self-destructive, controlling, deceptive, illegitimate, brain-damaged, socially poisonous, conspiratorial, manipulative, fraudulent, despicable, weird, imbecilic, libelous, fundamentalist, byzantine, abusive and, to any well-meaning would-be real estate entrepreneur, not good.In other words, if you want to invest, you might want to play eenie-meenie-miney-moe with penny stocks or something.

I can't deal with emotional tenants and their home is an emotional thing.

They accept, you sink money into a home inspection, you get emotionally (and small scale financially) invested in the deal, and they have the leverage to say "as-is" and they hope you're so deep in the process you pull the trigger and eat the cost.

I'm not emotionally invested but my mother is involved and could use some guidance.

When they found out how much it could potentially cost, they balked at the cost (most likely an emotional reaction due to the amount).

This is usually a VERY emotional decision for them.

They can be very aggressive and they play off emotions.

@Tiffany Ward Sounds like your thinking with your head, not emotions, so that's going to serve you well going forward.Its okay to take risks - let's just make sure its worth it!

Clayton Miller know what your max bid is before you arrive to the auction and don't get caught up in the emotion of bidding.