If not, pay off the mortgage all at once.This will help keep you from rationalizing a bad rental purchase just because you earmarked the funds for it. 

Would the fact that our house is in the ~ $850k valuation range influence your advice? 

Each deal...good, bad, or somewhere in between...sharpens your instincts.

Not bad, but a lot of work and hard to find a specific expense if I can't remember it when I'm categorizing the expense a week later in RH or something.  

Every PM I've met has at least several bad reviews, but I'm hoping this helps. 

Once the common equity has absorbed all the "bad", the pref equity gets affected.Another thing to think about with pref equity offered during a capital call.

We don’t know any PMCs to recommend in the area mentioned, but since selecting the wrong PMC is usually more harmful than selecting a bad tenant, you might want to read our series about “How to Screen a PMC Better than a Tenant”:https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/3094/91877-how-to-screen-a-pmc-better-than-a-tenant-part-1-services-and-processesWe recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

They either had below mkt. rents or high vacancies and bad reputations and with super managing them I significantly grew the cash flow. 

It sounds complicated but it's not as bad as it seems. 

Willard,FHA has taken a bad rap over the years but to be honest it’s a great loan for anyone looking to use the banks money and keep your cash in the savings.