How's Alaska treating you? 

With a 30 year mortgage, you can still treat it like a 15 year mortgage with double payments, lump sums, etc. you also have the flexibility of a lower monthly payment, so cash flow would be better and would free up more capital to invest elsewhere.

That's probably how they will treat your apartment.

Communicate well with your tenants and treat them fairly.

I always respond to them with the following: because they are making money off my properties, we are treating this like a commercial lease.

The same shared causation can apply to the example above as well.Also, with respect to your comments to @Greg Martin  If there is gross negligence, this may eliminate coverage as conduct that rises beyond neglgience is usually treated as an exception under the policy.

Since the trust is revocable in this case, I feel that it's more or less irrelevant for the situation as all items would get treated similarly.

., not as part of a business activity), the gains from the sale of each parcel would generally be treated as capital gains.

Hard to say.I suggest talking to your CPA about both choices as well as a loss on a "flip" (which this would be if you were to simply sell it at a loss) is going to be treated differently than putting a lot of capital into something you hold as a rental.

Then if you want to rent out 2 rooms maybe you could grant the "in house" tenant a PM role to make sure the house is treated properly when you guys are traveling.