Decide which game you want to play.

It's not the most beautiful work of art, but it gets the job done and it's extremely easy for someone like myself (very little html experience) to edit and plug and play.

"Hey NFL, can I play quarterback this Sunday?"

There are companies out there offering low interest rates for 30 year fixed mortgages so you would not need to deploy all of your capital into one rental property and then play the waiting game for when interest rates drop. 

This is usually a short term play, maybe up to 3-5 years.

If the rent you will pay (if you don't house-hack) is higher than the negative profit per month, it generally isn't a bad play to house-hack.

It only comes in to play if you ever sell without an exchange before dying. 

@Justin Segarrayou got great responses about screening so i want to respond to something else you posted"fear is not being able to find good tenants in a reasonable time frame"homeownership and investing is a very, very long term play and it is absolutely worth it to WAIT for good tenants. 

The appraisal is usually issued for the benefit of the lender so you can play hardball and share that the lender will not release a copy of the report until after settlement (which does happen in some instances depending on the lender and their policies).

If you can find a very similar property (properties) within a few blocks that is golden....but you will find that often there will be few, or sometimes none, within a close proximity.This is when your talent will come into play.