Expenses and Maintenance features are also very good IMO. 

The original six month tenant I had extended the lease 9 times and stayed a total of 5 years, paying me about $15k over market rent annually.  

If I convert those monthly nets into annual nets and plug those in to see what amounts of cash in would lead to those results in each case, I come up with:Scenario 1: $2000/month ($24000 annual) to equal a 12% return means you're in $200,000 cash. 

Remember that averaged 8% annual is WITH dripping the div, not taking it.

Quote from @Victor Yang:In addition, is it possible for me and my wife to gift 36k worth of equity per year of the house (under the annual exclusion limit) and therefore have none of the costs go towards the lifetime gift limit?

Then you need to account for soft expenses like Vacancy/turnover, maintenance, and capital expenses.

You would then stress to not incur any improvement cost above $22,000 or you may have to liquidate the property.In this scenariod, $60,000 if you are making an above return at 10% to 12% annually + $30,000 making $4% in a HYSA, the average return is maybe around 8%The blended return would be about 9%You may be better off investing in the stock market, get a slightly lower return but without all the added stress / work.

You should have ample reserves and make sure the house is not a money pit from the maintenance perspective. 

As an example I was looking at a multi unit, smaller building and within 90 seconds of viewing the proforma I saw the maintenance/repair figures were "low".

For 2024, the annual gift tax exclusion is $18,000 per recipient (rising to $19,000 in 2025), and amounts above this require filing a gift tax return (Form 709).