No need to get all crazy on it.Essentially tracking these kinds of things in a STR are not like you would in another business.

with self-employment money before you can buy a house. that  'm not sure about Dallas, but here in Colorado Springs and Denver where we work, the markets are kind of flat right now, so waiting a little bit to buy probably wouldn't change what you can buy too much.

Congrats on your graduation  Rolando.In my opinion you should go for a conventional FHA  than a 203k loans  because 203k has extra fees  of your 3.5%  they work kind of like hard money lenders the only think is that the rate is lower than a hard money lender but higher than a conventional FHA  I just bought my first house here in Oakland California using 203k loan which works for me because I had  to renovate the entire house $125k of renovation with a rate of 7.6 and is been 8 months and I am ready to refinance to Lower my payments and the rate .In my opinion is worth it 203k loan if your repairs are over 100k  for all the benefits that you get with the city and sewer company. 

Establish your budget, the kind of property (duplex, triplex, or fourplex) that interests you, and the degree of property management participation you desire.2.

What kind of purchase price should we budget if we want to pay 25% down and have 6 months in reserve.

This will define for us what size of land we will be targeting, what unit compilation we are looking at doing which helps define some of our cost outlay and we will have an idea of market pricing capacity so from this we can formulate a generalized range of acceptable site development costs which then empowers us to know; what kind of land are we looking for, in what area, what's an acceptable price range to delve further...... 

Call II: Hi Folks,I am kind of new to real estate.

:)  I also can help you run numbers of any kind!

Get the kind with pull cords rather than remotes, as remotes can absolutely break and will for sure get lost. 

This is the kind of situation where you absolutely need to get a local real estate lawyer involved.