verbal agreement does not cut it. your brother needs to have temporary occupancy addendum to the agreement. it spells out if there is rent, what is the max stay (no more than 60 days otherwise it is considered an investment property for a buyer), daily rate over agreed time to possession, needs to have signatures. 

Many people like seasons and don't like high humidity places, even if temporary.

It works great, I can open remotely and/or send a temporary code via smart phone to realtor or prospective buyer.

Here is my foreclosure scriptForeclosure ScriptHi, I’m looking for _____ … Hi ______ … my name is _______ with I Buy Houses.I hate making these types of telephone calls… And I’m sure you’ve aware that your house has showed up on the [your county] county website as a house in foreclosure. 1.Is the foreclosure a temporary situation…one where you will be able to…. come up with the… money… or are you going to …sell your house… before the bank takes it?

So this is actually a temporary good-buy to real estate investing for me.

.$150/mo is very temporary.

I'm seeing a lot of buzz about the rust belt but am not sure what the actual market is like locally or if the boom is temporary, also I'm open to exploring other affordable metros. 

I would add that forced appreciation is appreciation too that is not dependent on market conditions ... and any sort of appreciation can be tapped at any time without selling via cash out refinance ... any market bubble pop tends to be temporary and a small blip in the longterm trend, unless you are not financially stable enough to hold through a downturn or think that prices would pop and never recover, in which case you probably shouldn't be owning in that market at all ... appreciation also shows up in ROI perhaps even as you define it and even without tapping equity as rents increase and if you calculate your "I" based on your total actual costs (based on your purchase price) and not current market value ... finally, I would say that I still care tremendously about long term appreciation and my resulting equity position, even if I don't plan to sell or cash out refinance, as it gives me a whole lot more exit strategies and options, which makes my investment less risky and more robust even if I don't choose to exercise these options ...

Bleeding the air out will only ever be a temporary fix until you figure out where the air is getting into the system.

In my opinion, HELOCs should only be used as temporary financing... not for long term.