There was a report on an apartment fire here, over 20 tenants became homeless, and the newspaper lamented that was because no one had renters insurance.Just to mention your tenant will sue you for negligence in the absence of such insurance.

Mention the circumstances under which the deposit might be retained as well as how it will be returned at the conclusion of the lease.Make sure you have enough insurance coverage for renting out a room by checking with your homeowner's insurance company.

I 2nd what @Mike Paolucci mentioned about starting with a turn key property.

Like others have mentioned treat this as a business arrangement. 

or pay points for lower rate but wait for longer to refi?

You could also do a split, as you mentioned.

i believe that you mentioned in another post that you don't already own a primary residence. is that accurate? 

Can't wait to take these suggestions and apply it to my current plan.

It might be a weird time to pick up multifamily rentals since there is a massive apartment complex being built at the moment, but single family should be pretty safe.Also worth mentioning San Antonio is experiencing massive appreciation right now and a portion of that is certain to spill over into the Corpus area based on proximity and a lot of San Antonio residents vacationing there.

Just wanted to mention that in case you thought you could sell some stock and not pay tax this year like a lot of people are trying to do.