Any Advice?

At one point in time, Brett owned four houses. He rented out the rooms to MMI (Motorcycle Mechanics) and flight school students. They paid rent for their room which also included the utilities.

This worked out great for the first few years. We had some fun parties and made lifetime friends.

We were able to sell the big house (7 bedrooms) at the height of the housing market. We were extremely lucky! So, then we were down to three houses. We wanted to sell those as well but Brett was advised against doing so.

Now, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We were able to sell one other house and were very fortunate that we didn't lose any money. We didn't make anything either. You can't help to "kick" yourself for not selling back in 2005 when we really want too. We would have made over $100k and now we made nothing.

Yep, it's the would have, could have, should have scenario. Oh well.

Now, the other rental house is really upside down. Brett bought the house for $180k (a great deal at the time) and now there is a foreclosure on the next block (same house) going for $60k. Yes, I am sure that the house is gutted but, really? $60k? There are also three other houses in foreclosure on the same small street that our rental house is. Those houses are going from anywhere $110k - $140k. Still a loss to us.

And to make matters worse, we are down two tenants. We are not too sure when we will be able to get those two rooms rented as the flight schools are down on students and MMI hasn't gotten back to us. Even then, those students usually don't start school for a few months.

There is always the option of renting to a single family but we already did that once and got burned. When the family moved out, they did about $10k worth of damage and we are still paying for it.

I am all for paying for what we are responsible for but this is tough to chew. There are houses going for less than half of what we paid for and we are still paying on a mortgage for $180k, while a few houses down the street, they are only paying $110k. We are also making up the costs of the mortgage and utilities that the rent from the tenants doesn't cover which is about $1500 per month.

Any ideas?