What I also enjoy is when people put out articles with contradicting view points and in six months or a year point to the - "see how correct i was", well yeah you placed bets on both red, black and green so you were going to be correct because you bet on all options.There’s a true story about a person who, during the late 1950s wanted to make money selling a stock market prediction newsletter, but had no verifiable experience or track record.  

Must time be tracked per property?

BUT, you can keep track of this also. 

Credit history is excellent.

But I would either do a 3.5% down FHA or a 5% down conventional Depending on credit.

As for the original post, I think something like this works best if it is concrete: dates (say the last week of July and December), monetary consideration (I would suggest a separate sublet provision wherein you pay them for use, rather than working out rent credits), insurance and liability requirements, etc.

For example, my ad will state whether we accept pets, that we want provide income around 3x the rent, and that every adult must pass a credit/criminal screening.

Am I on the right track?

But here are some really interesting numbers...Ok so this one doesn't look too bad but notice how much more the townhouses and condos dropped in prices over the last downturn.2007 peak to now isn't so good...Before the 2007 run up to now is better, but even then, apartment condos performed the worse (so best case scenario, you have the worse performing asset type, worse case scenario you had a terrible return), and that's assuming you had nothing go wrong with the condo (special assessment etc)But benchmarks don't even tell the whole story, because if you had a specific condo investment, and you tracked it's value overtime, benchmark prices isn't the right approach as it evolves overtime (benchmark price is the price of a typical property generated at each point in time).

To prepare, focus on saving for a strong down payment and maintaining a solid credit profile, as both are critical for competitive financing.If possible, look into FHA or conventional loan options for owner-occupied properties, which may offer favorable terms, especially for first-time buyers.