If you simply want to buy a property two in your own name and you have enough income to carry multiple mortgages with a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan, then you don't have to have one, but Debt to Income rations become an issue as you start to scale up.

This is telling you that they are both volatile personality types and tend to let things escalate rather than being calm and rational, which could come across in their dealings with you.If you are in a higher end market or have other less drama prone choices in tenants I would pass.  

There's no rational reason for $100m apartments except that someone will pay it to park their money somewhere, anywhere.This is my 'elevator pitch' for rentals:If you buy a rental property that does not cashflow ,but pays all it's bill and maintenance with 25% down on a 15 year note, at the end of 15 years you own it outright and have made about 9.6% annually CoC.

The acid test is an example, debt to assets and measuring liquidity, if you wanted a debt coverage ration of 2 to 1 most would never buy a property starting out.

I'm beginning to look into this neighborhood as the rent to price ration seems to be good.

I actually started investing in Seattle but now I'm living in Hawaii, which are both known for being pretty pricey markets, not to mention the rent to value rations aren't as high as some of the Sunbelt states where I invest these days.

This will help to keep your credit score up, but it may hurt your debt to income ration.

But for one tenant whose bathroom I'm about to have cleaned, he's a good guy, pays on time, and I'd rather pay a couple bucks (ok, more than a couple) to have his bathroom cleaned, which he'll appreciate, and it will give him one more reason to be able to rationalize staying in my rental when the next rent increase comes.As far as asking the wife to perform this task, this is something I'm not qualified to give any advice on, so you're on your own with that one.I guess if we knew how many properties each person owned, how much equity they had, and how much net cash flow they had from their properties, we could rank the answers by that criteria.Joffrey LongGrumpy Old Landlord

.* if getting  traditional  loan for the  purchase - the lender wont need to include a payment on the 401K loan in qualifying rations  *  you will need to  provide 401K terms of withdrawal and paper trail of the  loan as part of the loan process ( which normally isn't an issue )

What is your rational for recommending this location?