When using the 50% rule, does that include vacancy and capital expenditures?

Sometimes it's best to stay put, don't incur moving expenditures and hassles and buy rental/flips. 

Only capitol expenditures are depreciated. 

I was wondering if you considered big ticket fixes (e.g capital expenditures) as part of the analysis? 

Think through how you go about defining capital expenditure vs repair, as this may come to bite you taking all as capital expenses (depreciation recapture upon sale, whereas repairs have no recapture).

However, we look at it as over the 10 years, even if we had to put $200 a month into the property (for Cap X expenditures, lost rent, maintenance etc.) that at the end of 10 years we will have a property that is worth $124,000 plus.

Normally, I would let my PM do this, but we had unexpected capex expenditures. 

my guess would be water,sewer,taxes,insurance, maintenance, capital expenditures, common areas (everything but the principal +interest ) 

I'm not a single mother though, I will have help from the father (that info plays into my money expenditures).

Anticipating lots of expenditures do to the ages of the homes in the area.As far as the leveraging, the plan is to use the equity in the homes to leverage deals after the exchange.