@Nick Rice You don''t give all the numbers, but you'll need to consider what your housing costs (or profit) will be for each of the scenarios (single family vs condo) with the room(s) rented out.You should also consider them as straight rentals.  

@will grabert & @ruth bayang...thanks for saying it straight.  

-buy cabinet doors bumpers. gift to neighboor and tenant-alternative option: buy a 1/2 box of donuts. talk with building engineer (@John Anderson: the shortest path between point A and B is a straight line. going to HOA (as you know already) is the 1,000 miles path)

Their actual material cost are 20%, this is also a straight install, if you have too many corners, flight of stairs, use glue, tacks strips, floor preparation of any degree, etc, they are always extra; they rely on those factors to regain their money too.

I'm just bringing it to market, but reconsidering my initial plan to do a straight flip (that would list at $385K), because the rental market is so strong.

My third option that I inconveniently left out (or option 1B) was to find a moderately straight forward live-in flip. 

If you are looking at a duplex, you would have to live in half in order to pay less than 20% down (maybe 15% some people say, but Ive never seen a bank loan 85% LTV on a non-owner occupied).To answer your question - I would have 4 months of straight mortgage payments PLUS your insurance deductible. 

If you are including the cost of financing in your cash flow (sounds like you are), be sure at least that you aren't including principal payments as an expense since these go straight to equity.  

It seems to me that investors could say the same thing about Northern CA real estate for the past 30 years straight, yet the folks who have bought there have been laughing all the way to the bank the entire time. 

My main question to start is this: does this group have straight content to read and study, or is all the info found in the forum threads?