My BEST advice and the truest advice of any REAL estate professional is to confirm for yourself.

I do have reserves, but I have worked too hard improving this place to see the cashflow get ruined by this loan servicer.

Basically, 25% down plus 6 months in reserves and then another pot of money so you don't toss all of your savings into a new investment.If you are planning on house hacking, you can cut the downpayment percentage way down.

Also I was told -to get ahead the competition (and my suspicion about the prevalence of 2-3 bedroom beachfronts was confirmed) - we have to go pet friendly and accommodate 10-12 in that 3 bd house.

After reports of unexpectedly persistent inflation, mortgage rates increased in April on expectations that the Federal Reserve will likely push back its first cut to the primary policy rate, which was originally expected in June of this year.

You’ll learn more by doing than you can from any guru, and you’ll have more money in reserves to pay for real life “lessons” as they come up (which will be the case guru or no guru, stuff always comes up when dealing with rental properties and tenants, there’s really no other way to learn than by doing IMO). 

i’ll buy & hold properties a mechanic shopkeep upgrading the businesses sit on reserves 

The biggest pitfall is when a landlord tries to be "nice" - non-paying tenants are literally stealing from you, treat them like the criminals that they are.To calculate reserves for vacancy costs We average about 2-3% vacancy across our portfolio, I use 5% as the number for reserves.

You keep a fractional reserve, plus credit reserves, plus liquid assets, and the rest of the capital goes into the real estate deals that really drive the return for you.

Just a thought.Depends on if you have cash reserves to cover the pipe replacement now; if not, you could save a certain amount each month to put towards eventual replacement.I guess you just have to decide if you want to pay to have the pipes replaced now, or at an unexpected time in the future.