I will be focused, however, on converting the townhomes into condominiums and selling individually to homeowners.

You may find that collectively (as a household) you may end up with a bigger tax bill/smaller refund when you file separately vs when you filing jointly.

Two adults means more household income which I find is safer if one loses their job.

@Joel OhA taxpayer renting a "dwelling unit", such as a house, apartment, condominium, mobile home, or boat on a short-term basis, from a single room to the entire property, typically reports the rental activity in their individual tax return on Schedule E.

I share the details here to show what a series of small low-risk transactions can do over the medium and long term to build passive income for retirement.The PA is for a 1 BR condominium unit in a 150 unit complex where we already have 22 units, bought in 3 earlier transactions.  

The guy who had power of attorney for the sale told me that the old lady who had the house kind of lost it and filled the truck top to bottom with household trash that had sat in the truck for years.

It appears that for many, many, many years the owners, boards and management had treated the building and units more as a Condominium in that each owner was responsible for the repairs to their own units, whether they lived there or rented (any damage to the inside of the unit was the sole responsibility of the unit owner).2 years ago, the board at that time brought on a new management company.  

Nor does the level of demand for MBS or credit default swaps.Additionally, mortgage debt owed by U.S. household was > $12 Billion before the housing crisis in 07/08.

Because he had a mortgage of $6k/mth and a car note of $2k/mth...in addition to his other household expenses. 

I wondered why the City of South Bend would hire an out of town company for the study until I looked at their national client list which includes over 450 reports for builders, developers, cities, non-profits, planners, investors, lenders, small companies and development subsidiaries of several Fortune 100 companies.You can read the report here https://www.southbendin.gov/sites/default/files/fi...The report is mainly about the residential market potential of downtown South Bend but the gist of it as it relates to your question is that on page 5 it states that approximately 60% of the households in the entire City of South Bend are owner occupied and 40% are tenant occupied.The US Census Bureau data confirms this with their latest data showing appx 59% owner occupants and 41% tenant occupied here:  https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/...