From discussions I've had with her,  the only missing ingredient is a good solid plan and some sort of point of reference for the check and balance or continuous review aspect.

I don't want to take any unnecessary risk when it comes to our health, and my wife especially is very conscious of what we put in our bodies (natural food ingredients, avoid certain chemicals, etc - she's starting a blog on her experiences/life with these topics - good stuff!).

Continuous learning is one of the key ingredients to success!

````````````````````````````````````````````Simplest strategy is to enter into a lease and a ROFR, get a 1003 Mortg app on the Tenant, get the tenant to lender and see what the chance w DTI and credit and other issues the renter can get the loan. 

Do you just want to find your retirement home and have the simplest possible course of action? 

In the simplest terms, my goal is to learn while I earn - ideally learning more about the investment side of real estate.

This is a city code/zoning problem and my attempt failed for the simplest reason: frontage on the street was required to be a minimum of 100ft and partitioning would have created 85ft. 

But appreciation is a result, not an ingredient.

Hey @Barri Griffiths...Keep it simple....a Lease Option will always be the simplest & most flexible choice UNLESS you absolutely don't want to be on title anymore.  

All this comes with the necessary actions required and is key ingredient a lot miss out on and that's simply taking action.