When they don't pay you evict them as a tenant rather than dealing with an ejectment which I guess can involved more nuanced arguments in court. 

House hacking will provide you with an onramp, though, and make it much easier to get started. 

Did you have an appraisal done at the date of death when you inherited it?

If an in-person visit is not feasible, we can easily arrange video tours to accommodate your schedule.

But there are tons of areas where you can buy that are not in an HOA. 

I am at an inflection point where I need to decide if I should try to sell or rent it due to possibly moving for a job change. 

I'm disappointed, because I thought you were an actual German.

You likely only made a down payment of 3-20% ....but you still get to write it off on the full value across 27.5 years.So 400k/27.5 = 14,000 ish a year of a write off where during the year you didn't need to incur an actual expense, no cash outflow. 

It ended up being an easy fix, getting steel braces installed for about $6000.

You should have 25% down payment + closing costs, + an oh Sh*t fund on top of that.