And then I randomly read where someone described "wholetailing" and I was like "oh hey I just did that!

The units were causing so many issues that rather than having a tenant call describing no air every month it was better to replace the units. 

Take your time and pencil out the cash flow as you described but put in property taxes and an allowance for emergency maintenance.

Further, just because there is an expiration date does not make it 'yours to sign' until the expiration, it is only 'yours to sign' until either the expiration or its withdrawal, whichever occurs first.As Jay Hinrichs pointed out, sign as soon as you decide the terms are acceptable.Finally Chris, what you were describing, that you had until a certain time to sign the contract, would be more of an option contract, i.e., the offer would be held open for a certain period of time, and you could enter into the contract at your option. 

@Evan Thomas, realistically, I could probably get away with doing what you describe, but these are my friends who I'm living with, so many of the operating expenses are shared, which is great.

We'll likely purchase our first house next year.We don't have any plans to buy real estate for investment purposes, other than what's described above, but I joined to try and get some ideas and information to see if it's possible for us.

The terminology "foundation repairs" or "Retrofits" is generally used to describe "Proprietary Foundation Systems" for MANUFACTURED HOMESHowever, If you're not dealing in MANUFACTURED HOME transactions there's no need for you to take the time to view the video.

The transaction you are describing is very common.

Those very tenants took the raise as an insult and used lots of words to describe me that weren't very nice.

I've read a few articles describing the benefit of using a 3rd party like "cozy.com" to collect rents from tenants...one benefit being my routing and account number aren't given to tenants for direct deposit which can evidently lead to issues down the road...however, the main benefit being that a tenant can stall an eviction by direct depositing a portion of the rent owed into my account, thereby, nullifying the eviction process and having to start over since I "accepted" partial payment.