On the other hand, I’m hesitant to simply pay down more of a property, as we don’t need the immediate cash flow.Fortunately, both my wife’s job and mine are recession-proof, which allows us to be a bit more aggressive with our investments.I’d really appreciate advice from investors who have experience with frequent moves or military service.

There are many reasons why I haven't pursued the arbitrage model, but mainly that it takes too long for the ROI after investing all your time and effort into buying furniture and renting and paying utilities.Let's say you rent an apartment for $1500 and you spend $7000 to furnished it.

I know you want to go full time and jump in, but I'd recommend staying with your day job as long as you can - it makes your life a lot more comfortable to have a steady stream of income to pay the bills every month!

I also have a mortgage on this property paying $683 a month.Now I'm deciding should I continue waiting for a possible tenant or should I just sell the property.

It was held by the previous owner for a very long time, so I wouldn't be surprised if some basic facts about the house are incorrect.I was making an offer on a house a couple years ago and discovered that the owner was paying taxes on an additional house that was on the neighbors lot and didn't know it!

To be clear, you are not paying off the 80K mortgage.

paying mgt any landscape/snow/utilities?

This is a the perfect vehicle to use for short term like buying a  property with cash, then refinancing the property to pay the line of credit back in full, and use it again.   

Namely, that if a tenant (in this case accompanied by a whole family) ends up stop paying rent and I would be on the hook for both covering the mortgage and dealing with open ended legal costs and time.

Things just require more ongoing expenses percentage wise out of state because you have to pay people to do everything for you and you will have a longer time building relationships with vendors even when getting decent referrals.