If she chooses to put the lease in her name alone, which is often a lot easier, they then lose all the protections in the SCRA.

If you insist on rejecting the purchase, because of the projected cash flow, I can almost guarantee you someone else will buy it, and though they may lose money, in 10 years they may actually make money with appreciation and by watching their expenses carefully.

@Mark UpdegraffI may lose out on a few deals, but with a full-time job I only have time for a couple deals going at one time anyway.

This is a great way to lose money and to set back your investing career.

Suppose the appreciation is still 2%, your total return if you sell is now $9200 and your IRR is $9200/100,000 or 9.2%.The flip side of this scenario is that its nearly impossible to lose money unless the property value drops more than the cash flows from rents, but you have a lot invested and might not be beating inflation by that much - lower risk and lower returns.Your breakeven point on the leverage scenario is $400/mo higher than without any leverage (cash purchase).

I've been told by some that if you buy something that's already performing at the maximum occupancy, you'll be paying top dollar and the only direction that your property value can really go is down if you mess up and end up losing tenants, since you don't have room to add value by increasing occupancy.

If you have a rental with window units and a competitor with central air, you are going to lose that tenant to the competition 100% of the time.

As you can see my parents are leaving a lot of Cash flow opportunities on the table and are even losing money on a property.

As you mentioned - take that energy, don't lose momentum and figure out how you can get that next property.

Don't gamble with the money you can't afford to lose