It’s crucial to ensure that your cash reserves can cover not only the mortgage but also unexpected expenses during the remodel.The 30% housing rule is a helpful guideline to avoid overextending yourself, and ideally, you should be comfortable with your monthly housing costs even without rental income.

I am still trying to figure out my buy box, but long term rentals feels like the right strategy for us.   

. * Day 1: I arrive at the rental.

I owned a rental in 2015 but sold it to make a big move to Florida.

@John Paul Palace their bggest challenge is finding competent PMCs to recommend to their clients.That's what most of the negative feedback here on BP is about them - which is UNFAIR as they're selling a rental property, NOT PMC services.Recommend you do your own due diligence on PMCs before just going with their recommendation.

Another thing to add is the regulations, HOAs and Cities are imposing a lot of regulation on short-term rentals or rent by a room, I have seen some HOAs regulate the amount of people authorized to rent the property too.It requires to do a lot of due dilligence to begin with mainly in such big house. 

As for financing, on a conventional loan if you do not need the rental income to qualify then you would not need to have the property rented but if you do need the rental income to qualify then you would.  

The things that give a rental a value in cashflow are benefits to the tenant in the form of living amities. 

So wholesaling flip and rental.

I like where I live and it has the potential to be a good rental for me down the line, so I've decided to go through with making the purchase.