Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse, but What's the likelihood of getting renters within the first 3 months? 

I have a 10 unit mixed-use in a 1 horse town, too.  3/4 of the tenants worked at the same place when I bought it.

It can be difficult to try to build all of the potential costs into the pro-forma especially early in the process without a buildable plan, and to some degree it seems the cart has to go before the horse because you don't want to hire the architects to get you a "for construction" plan if you don't have your muni approvals yet. 

Horse people look for pasture board (horse lives full time on land with shelter) and full board (horse gets a stall, pasture, cleaning, feed, etc).

ok,  I'm sure this horse has been beat to death but I need to know. 

Pick a horse here and ride it.    

You don't want to put the cart before the horse and start looking at properties first. 

If I were to look at a 10% "vacancy" rate and 10% maintenance rate, we'd be just shy of breaking even, which would still be coming out more "ahead" than we currently are) Am I putting the cart before the horse?

Not to beat a old horse, but 13k is alarmingly low.

It's putting the cart before the horse so to speak.