I emphasize sticking to your standards, not bending to the spikes in the market but digging through them to find what you want. 

But, there are scores of threads emphasizing that Banks force Buyers to wait out six months!

In other words, use some of the same "farming techniques" that the better real estate agents use, but emphasize that as a buyer, you're ready to close "on a day and time convieient for them" and they won't have to pay a commission.  

Would like to emphasize that I am NOT against Robert Kiyosaki.

And they did emphasize that they probably will still live in my rental until May 2018 since they normally spend a long time looking for a house.

But I would like to use my chance to comment on this to emphasize how much of this situation really reflects on how you've managed the landlord-tenant relationship to date.In a high-regulation area-of-operation like California, cordial landlord-tenant relationships will get you past a lot of garbage like this.

It's of course possible that you stumbled onto a "lemon", but the biggest learning I take out of your story is actually something that folks like @Jon Holdman here keep emphasizing (and rightly so): make sure you have enough reserves to weather significant unexpected expenses.  

I went to college and got a business degree that emphasized real estate.  

Again, ask which is used.If I Have an appraiser or BPO (broker’s price opinion) come inside, and I have done a lot of repairs, I show the appraiser each of the items I have replaced, and emphasize the grade.

Important to my wife and I, anyway.I couldn't agree more about the nature of the site and how it seems to emphasize much more heavily the successes than the failures.