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.

If you have 600k and 30k makes up 5% of your overall portfolio strategy then you can sit on the property for awhile before it produces.I could buy many commercial land deals today but I choose to go after fractured projects already constructed on and defaulted from the last downturn.

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. 

Fractured condo buyers , my guess would be , are a more limited pool than someone that can take whole ownership.

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".