You should always have your first property running at max, meaning spending money to fix things that you know about now so that your capital expenditures will be nothing over the next couple of years while you save for the next one.

A capital expenditure is money spent by a business or organization on acquiring or maintaining fixed assets, such as land, buildings, and equipment.

Due to the recent expenditures, I'm looking to do what's most economical but also of decent quality that will last.  

Seems like the best move is to use that VA loan, preserve existing capital for repairs/future expenditures/worldwide plague, and then refinance into a conventional when it's time to use the VA loan again.

Did you discover the only triplex that has no repairs, tenants stay forever(vacancy) and nothing wears out(capital expenditures).

I usually try to meet this rule after setting aside 15% of the rent for maintenance, vanacies and capital expenditures.

What about capitol expenditures?

What about capitol expenditures?

You need to subtract property taxes, insurance, maintenance, capital expenditure allowance, and your note payment.

While there are of course some benefits to a condo, the associations are able to raise your HOA fees any time they have a "need", may have to levy large "special assessments" in the event of large expenditures, and can even make sure that only a certain % of units in the community are not occupied by actual owners thereby making rentals difficult.