My wife currently pays no SE taxes, as she is not employed and has no personal income, i.e., we are a single-income family.  

If the bank goes under while it's holding your mortgage, rest assured that somebody else will pick up the servicing and holding of that note, so it's really no skin off your nose if they do go belly up.

Your nose is the main detector for a gas leak.  

In a way it's good that she is being a hard nose about this.  

For example, if you have a one million dollar portfolio earning you 5% ($50,000/y), and you "borrow" $100,000 of it to buy you a rental investment, then all of a sudden the stock market nose dives so that your portfolio is only valued at $700,000, all of a sudden you owe your portfolio one dollar for every seven, meaning that your portfolio is only worth $600k.But if you had only used $20k and took out a normal mortgage for the other $80k, your portfolio would still be worth $680k.In both scenarios, the value of your property investment will likely have fallen by the same proportion, so the real question becomes: how much built-in equity did you manage to achieve to begin with?

We're busting our butts/nose to the grindstone searching for a great deal and a great team.

If it costs you $1000 to pay the tenant off vs $3000 plus in hard costs in addition to lost rent/make ready costs and additional factors such as time and aggravation, consideration must be made to "hold your nose" and do it as distasteful as it may beAs far as consideration to future landlords, I cannot or should not overcome their lack of screening. 

I'm happy to have folks no show, tell me they house looks like crap, stick their noses up, even ask "what color am I going to stain the deck".  

Sounds like your HOA is sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong, trying to intimidate you early on as many like to do.

Lol, I know, I was just giving Cleveland some moral support :)Looks like Johnny is back, hope he keeps his nose clean, we will see , I think he will be our 25+ QB in the past 10 yrs. its sick!