I have been through several deployment cycles and while I understand the concern of vacancies during these periods, the reality is the effects are minimal.  

Yes they are individually not all that profitable but they continue to build equity via mortgage pay-down while allowing me to take cash out and buy other investments.But you make a great point, if the property has appreciated and you'd rather invest in self-storage or something else, by all means sell it either directly or with owner financing and re-deploy. 

Good luck and Godspeed on your deployment!

The plan is to deploy several hundred thousand in capitol (from a post tax brokerage account) split up across 5 investments or so to start for the sake of both Diversity and possible Passive pairing to help with taxes (Ex one may give more losses and other more passive income and thus offset). 

When you went on deployment you could rent out that room as well.

I happen to be on the wholesale/rehab side of things, so with 40K to 50K free cash flow, there are a ton of avenues to deploy the funds.Word of caution though.. have you dealt with renters previously in some capacity and/or have you considered the challenges of dealing with possible renter and building issues from a different state? 

That will help you to create a strategy around where to deploy your capital, what type of criteria you need to focus on to work towards your goal, what your level of risk can/will be, and more.

Hello, new to Bigger Pockets but I had a previous rental near Fort Riley KS in Manhattan (The Little Apple) Kansas basically the renters just stopped paying rent for three months before deploying which is meh. 

If you can deploy your capital in an investment which offers you a higher return than the interest rate you can pay down, then absolutely you should be investing it.

There's really no good reason to sell unless you want to deploy all of the accrued gains somewhere else.