She had some extra furniture in storage that we paid to use for a short time.

Frankly if you have extra money you can keep that in the bank as a safety net until you feel comfortable enough with the income from that rental to then buy a second property.Most of my clients purchase with a loan but then as they generate income the revenue is put back into the property, through either improvements or paying down the mortgage. 

The clause mentioned is a prepayment penalty, where an extra percentage is paid to make up for it. 

I am looking at low down payment owner-occupied options through a portfolio lender at 5% with PMI, that will go away once reaching 80% LTV (so will get some extra cashflow after approximately year 7).In my analysis I account for Expenses including (common utilities, taxes, property management (10%), Long term maintenance (10%), short term maintance/repairs 95), legal, misc, vacancy (7%) etc, etc.)

Did you pay the extra and was it worth it?

This is a small home and I'm just using the extra cash to help me through college.

Many pets will be hard on your unit and you want to collect money for these extra upkeeps.

So glad we didn't waste extra time and money accommodating them.  

Just a few extra thoughts based on some of the additional comments. 

Make sure their security deposit is sufficient to cover the extra turnover costs and your extra risk.