2. Find out what your closing costs are going to be. You may be going back and forth with different lenders to get lowest interest rate and then get dinged at closing table with massive closing costs. Ask each lender that makes you an offer to give you an estimate on what closing costs are going to be and compare lenders.

3. Make sure terms of financing are what you want. If you want to have a variable interest rate, then get one. If you are more comfortable with a 5 year fixed rate, then make sure that you don’t get talked into settling for something less. You can’t refinance as often as you want, so you want to make sure you do it right, because once your done, you are locked in.

Take advantage of internet and apply to many different mortgage companies that will provide you multiple offers. Do this to make sure you can compare offers from many different companies instead of taking a chance of getting what you don't want.

To see our list of highly recommended refinance mortgage lenders who can give you quotes from multiple lenders, visit this page: Recommended Refinance Mortgage Lenders.

Now let's be optimistic, let's hope it takes only 3 years down, and 3 years back up. Over that 6 years, you will be subsidizing your tenant each and every month, will be responsible for repairs, taxes, finding new occupiers, and all hassle that a person would normally expect to get paid for. And you will be doing it for nothing. Nada. Zilch. If you are subsidizing your tenant to tune of 20% or so (a common figure at present according to industry figures) this means you will effectively have lost about 9% of your investment anyway as 6 years unfold in all their predictability. Add on lost opportunity cost of using your money more effective over 6 years, and you can realistically double that figure BEORE you look at all hassle and heartache of being a landlord. In other words, pretty much same cost to you as selling now at what looks like a bad loss.

The alternative? You are free to get on with life, and try to find some other way to make money. Additionally, if you manage to sell now, even at a 20% loss, it will probably fall at least another 10%. This means that you can buy again in 3 years time at lowest point of crash, and recover your losses in 3 years that would follow, making a healthy 10% or so whereas as things stand you will only be clawing back to break-even by 2011. And icing? Buying at low in 3 years time means a smaller mortgage, which means lower interest payments, which means a respectable yield!. The calculations are quite complicated, but put simply, taking your medicine now in form a of a 20% hit could mean that in 6 years time you are up perhaps 40%. The choice of course, is yours. And even if you decide to hang on for grim life, there is always a chance that you might make it out other side with a small profit some time in next 10 years or so. Best of luck, Landlords!