Currently Own - Need to put up for rent

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Currently we own a 2.5 year old house. We bought the house because it was brand new, and it was in a place where we thought we would live for a long time. Long story short.... Taxes went up drastically, a paycut came at work, and we were basically at the point that it could've gotten nasty. I found another job in another state where we currently rent ( for the price of a mortgage, more on that later ). The house has been on the market just about a year now.

Currently we can comfortably live with a mortgage and rent. My job isn't permanent, but it's not going away anytime soon either. The wife is climbing the corporate ladder rather successfully. If I lost my job for some reason, I would be able to find another here ( I've lost one before, and it sucks ).

In our new location, it's a booming area, and rentals are getting snatched up like crazy. We could easily afford a lesser priced house and live in it for now instead of an apartment. We plan to leave this area, most likely, within 2 years or so. I don't like the area, but it's a booming real estate / job market. People are moving here at very rapid pace.

So this all started us thinking about starting a rental business. I would like to start renting the old ( new ) house and try to recoup some costs. I could probably get about 70-80% of the mortgage, but I wouldn't be paying gas ( it's in a frigid area - in fact the pipes just froze, which brought us to this thinking ), electric, etc to keep the house alive while it's on the market. It doesn't look like it's gonna sell anytime soon, but it will most likely rent fast. We could absorb the loss, while accruing equity. That is fine with us.

Which brings in the second house. If we can comfortably afford it, and we can easily get rent for it when / if we leave, shouldn't we take advantage of that and buy something now? If we rent out the first house, we could easily afford the second, while keeping money in the bank to support both when needed.

I guess I'm looking for some advice as to if this is a stupid move to make. Granted I haven't thought about it as in depth as I'd like, I plan on looking into this pretty heavily over the next few weeks. Our lease is up end of April, and if we can get a house rolling by then, that would be best.

To add to all of this, my parents will be in retirement soon. They just came into some money, not a ton, but enough, and I know my dad would wanna get in on this down the road. I know he would help out if things went bad, as well, although I prefer to fend for myself. I wouldn't use the wildcard unless I absolutely needed to.

Anybody have some general guidance? links? book recommendation? I plan on reading everything I can here, and I've found a couple other good sites, one being TLPA. I think this might be a great opportunity to make some real money and become self sufficient. My wife would probably never leave her job, so we will always have her income and retirement plans, but I could easily leave my current position sometime down the line and do this full time.

I'm really excited, and mostly lost at this point. Any guidance would be appreciated.

- Thanks