Help with our strategy.

[John Mainwaring]

So here I am sitting with the counter-offer wondering if it is really in our best interest?

We are just starting in this venture and ran into our dream house in the process. Our initial goal was to get a place for my inlaws to live closer to us. Then I discovered a house of Frank Lloyd Wright lineage available and figured that we could move them in there until we found something else, VRBO'ing it after a more suitable alternative is found. After renovation, it would be about 100k more than we want to spend, but it would net us between 50 and 100k of equity and it appears to cash flow pretty well in that scenario. The downside is it would blow our debt to income ratio. I have located several opportunities for investment around us that could likely be owner financed, but I'm troubled by losing the flexibility of a standard mortgage. The immediate goals are a couple of single families and a multi this year, we were also toying with the idea of a condo in Orlando (DW has a pixie dust problem) that could be VRBO when we're not using it. We are both self employed, my wife is a doctor and I stay home with the little ones and play farmer. She routinely gets offers for lines of credit and such for other business purposes. We also live with my mom with no mortgage overhead as well, I pay property taxes as rent. My mother does own another rental that is paid in full, I've been managing it and it has been working out well for us. In fact it really changed my wife's mind regarding RE seeing those rent checks come in every month.