I am afraid we will fall for a property with a false sense of a good deal.Are there any suggestions to help me run an analysis that would better account for the larger down payment and allow me to better analyze potential properties in the future.

Hello, if you must live in San Jose, I'd say renting makes more sense, especially a 2.5M house for 5K a month.

@Jason Tucker  you need to add in your utilities, common area cleaning, and turnover costs to determine if it makes sense. 

Makes complete sense - it is a hassle!

As it stands, the post makes no sense to me.

They also did not know that their SS mangers were kiting $5K per month of rents so the rent roll made no sense and I got the bonus of the missing $$'s. 

And that will be hard in short amount of time.Hope that makes more sense...but certainly feel free to just call me if you want to talk anything through.  

I hope I make sense haha

I hope this question makes sense as this is our first year filing and our first full year of operation. 

I think paying off your primary makes sense if you are close to retirement, but not if you’re young, and not if you have a sub 6% interest-rate.