Plus rents were low.

Outsource tedious low-value added activities but make sure you do the important ones yourself.

Ours is a student rental so we set more aside for maintenance and repairs, however, because of the location our vacancy is really low.  

Low priced homes that need minor work are not easy to come by, you have to be willing to take on a large scope of work to get the "deal"

I have the sense that demand there will be fairly low.

The only thing that it could do is lower the amount you can borrow for the investment due to increasing your DTI, but 10k isn't that much. 1.9% is pretty low and should be easy to out perform the debt...

Buy a place to live and you have the opportunity to gain equity that way with a really low downpayment if you go FHA.

I see that you are in Barstow, an area with low prices but low economy too.

I have great loan guy in the Columbus market that does nationwide loans and can do loans for homes low as $20,000 sales price and doesn't add junk fee's or hike up the rates because it's a low sales price.  

That seems way too low.