Pensacola is a great market for investing and the number of properties available right now is up so there are actually some on market properties with potential. 

This signals long-term appreciation potential.

If this job popped up out of the blue, your intent was not to move within the 1st year, so you may be ok.If you are planning on building a portfolio of homes, it is safest to stick in your home for 12 months to reduce the appearance of potential fraud. 

For example, a coffee maker costs very little but is consistently mentioned in reviews, which leads to higher satisfaction and potentially more bookings.

I have a pretty large emergency fund in place for those properties, but I wonder if that capital could be better employed elsewhere (potentially acquire another property).  

Best practice is to keep one or two payments in reserve from the buyers down payment for such instances.

There’s huge retal income potential if you nail that balance between improvements that wow tenants and improvements that merely look fancy but don’t justify higher rents.I’d also keep an eye on how your high end plan fits the local demand.

I was wrong to fall in love with the potential of this development.

But in practice most of these numbers are likely not taking into account turnovers and repairs.

We've actually previously had two potential buyers come forth, one w/ $20k & one w/ $30k - unsolicited offers that we let get away before we even considered owner financing (or knew what it entailed).