You buy something at the top with big debt and then get cleaned out.

I guess that's not too bad.The boat has high insurance, cleaning, monthly maintenance, high acquisition cost and you still need the purchase the boat slip.

The liability with providing "clean water" and the potential environmental costs with a septic system makes the risk much higher even on a great cashflow deal.  

Here's the breakdown:Purchased with cash: $167,000Title closing fees: $2,107Misc expenses (paint, cleaning, repairs): ~$2,000Credit to my condo account from association rent: ~$1500 (This was an amazing surprise)Monthly interest: $166.67 (Nice perk of a family investor!)

I use 10% for a vacancy rate, when evaluating new purchases, but good clean units rent really fast.

They're clean, reasonable seeming people. 

The duplex mainly just needs the siding cleaned and stained.  

If this is a single family home then you would just wait until the lease ends, clean it up and sell it at market value.

The tenant that is leaving has kept the place reasonably clean throughout their stay.

I got one a few years ago that I paid closing costs around $1400, put $200 into the house to clean it up and marketed it as a Lease Option.