the topic is a bit older, but I want to dispel the misconception that rented apartments are hard to sell. Every investor is happy when they have a tenant who has proven their reliability over the past years. Finding new tenants is neither easy nor cheap. Owner-occupiers can terminate the lease, and you cannot assume it will go to court or that the apartment will be vandalized
Well, that probably varies a lot regionally.
Here in the south, the owner-occupier simply pays much, much more than an investor. Thus, you generally get more for an empty property when selling.
An investor also usually prefers an empty property, since they can then choose the tenant themselves and usually rent it out at a higher price.
I am both an owner-occupier and an investor and I regularly look at the market. I usually prefer something empty. The only exception: when the current rent is so low that the value of the property is correspondingly lower, but it is foreseeable that the rent will increase through new letting or other adjustments.