As a landlord in SF (talk about bad life choices): if you can't rent out your units, you're charging too much. Simple as that. It's no different than a renter being frustrated because he's looking for a penthouse condo for $100/month.

It might be sad if you ended up in some overly leveraged position, but you did that knowing the risks and expecting to make a lot of money using that leverage. But no one is entitled to risk-free money.