When I looked at prices recently they look like they've gone up quite a bit but I know they vary a lot depending on the neighborhood. 

Great idea(s) depending on your market. 

@Kyle Carter  We love renting to Section 8, however depending on the size of the property you may not be able to realistically rent to 100% section 8.

It  really depends what you value.

We see a tightening or restricting of coverage, higher deductibles, more tedious underwriting requirements, and increasing rates.As far as deductibles specifically, it really depends where you are in the country. 

My COC return will vary depending on my out of pocket cash.

For example:Second, under their "About us" link, click on "Management" and you'll see a "Meet the Team" page where there's the following photo/info for this James LaPushner fellow you mentioned (which says he was born in New Zealand):However, if you do a reverse Google image search on this photo, you'll find that it's posted on several other sites, including this one: https://planetaseminarov.ru/people/konstantin-baksht.htmlHere's a photo of him from this page:This page is written in Russian, but if you translate it, it says his name is Konstantin Baksht, he lives in Moscow Russia, and he is the owner and CEO of the international consulting company Baksht Consulting Group. 

You may decide not to deliver a legal notice right away depending on the violation, but when you know you are dealing with a problem tenant, go straight to the legal notice requirements, and if the tenant still doesn't comply, evict. 

My immediate goal is to acquire our first property and spend the next two years mastering the basics of real estate investment. ( Refining the Go and No property search criteria/ Learning the value of taxes and avoiding them as much as possible/ 1031 exchanges) Depending on my wife’s career orders, we may remain in Baltimore for 1-2 years, but I’m also exploring opportunities in West Texas, Sierra Vista, AZ, and Houston, TX.

For context, downtown Alexandria performs super well as a rental market and bringing in $5.5k+ as the monthly rental income if you choose to move out of the househack in the future will be absolutely feasible (depending on the property of course).