No reason to wait and eat 3 months of rent.

I'm not very familiar with these markets but I've found Columbus has great tenant quality on average, less property crime, and great appreciation potential.Any market can offer killer cash flow with those lower purchase prices, but in my experience, you're more likely to run into challenging tenant situations and higher maintenance costs that eat into those returns.

He may have to eat those additional expenses if he can't prove he had approval prior to doing it.c.

Just trust us with your nest egg.  

By the time you take out a trad. cash-out refi, you'll be eating a bunch of fees, which will chew into your theoretical 5% arbitrage spread. 

When they do, they are typically covered by insurance and settled outside of court.The odds of a landlord being sued for a large enough amount that it eats up their insurance, the equity in the investment, and their personal assets is almost non-existent.

Kentucky keeps eating! 

We also have pretty high property tax bills (around 2% of the purchase price/property value) that eat into a lot of the rental income. 

Personally I would chalk this up to making a mistake not raising it more the first time...eat the mistake and maybe raise it again in 6-12 months.

You will need to factor in rehab costs, which could easily eat up another $50-75k depending on the condition.