However, as I mentioned in my original post, my immediate goal is to move out of our current townhouse into a larger single-family home that better suits my family’s needs (we have a baby and a big dog).

Yeah Uncle Sammy said it's now T-town and that a dog-scat deal so to kick-rocks. 

Not sexy but I sleep like a baby every night and cash those checks on the 1st of every month!!

This run though focusing on zero debt instead of drinking the refi to you die cool aid I believed prior to 08 .. we can now sleep well at night compared to those days.

NYC DOB considers a shelter a 'community facility with sleeping quarters' and may require a special permit for this use.Thanks Abel, You provided me with the right search terms to dig deeper. 

But that is an other story in itself.Reminds me this concept: 2 dogs fighting over a bone while the 3rd just walks away with it.Then, traffic in my case doesn't matter.

In my opinion (I'm definitely bias now, but invested here long before becoming an agent) people are still sleeping on the area with the proximity to Northern CA. 

Getting a dog (against the lease), saying it was an ESA, dragged his feet getting the paperwork to us. 

I got a very lucrative multi-day booking this fall, and then tried to cancel just a couple of weeks later claiming I want except her service dog which wasn't true.

But if that's what it takes to sleep at night, it might be worth it.The one catch to that is that real estate is not your only option of investing.