Been asked on BP a million times...... quick raise to market or slow raise....no "right" answer....Its a balance..... big rapid jump often induces turnover...... and turnover costs $$ in the short term (rehab cost vacancy etc) but cant pay off in the long run..... getting to market faster recoups that expense for the rehab and vacancy etcSlow, smaller increase keep the tenant and reduced the short term expenses but doesn't maximize the return over the long haul necessarily......As stated before....make sure you are comparing apples to apples..... a lot of new landlords think their old beat up place will rent for the same as the nice new places just because its the same bedroom/bath/sq footage as the ones they looked up......Do they math.... if you can rehab it cheap and quick and jump up a lot to market, then you make you $$ back fast...... but don't fool yourself into thinking that always happens

Actually, part of the beauty in a long term strategy (10+ years) is that you can factor that there will be a recession at some point in your hold and therefore reduce the need to time the market.

Some of us inexperienced investors have no money, a ton of energy, and time.  

So lots of big boxes have been reducing their footprints down lately.

The goal is to spend the next couple of years massively reducing your monthly expenses, thus massively increasing your net income. 

Regarding property management, I'm hoping to be able to either find a property management company or offer reduced / free rent to one of the tenants who is able to be my maintenance person and I would essentially manage the properties myself. 

The code enforcement team has been on my side since the beginning to help me and the seller get the property back into compliance, so we can appeal to a magistrate to have the liens reduced.

I want to structure it in a way so that we are paid back so that the loan balance can be reduced quickly.

And the refinance will reduce your payment by $x per month.Closing costs/monthly savings = payback period. 

If you earn enough to qualify for a >$1m mortgage, you will be over that income limit, this works out to being a pretty hard and fast rule too.So it's basically stick to SFR and duplexes, put the time/energy/work into finding something off-market (no listing agent, not on MLS, not on redfin, not on zillow, etc) for dirt cheap (25% off of what it would sell for on the MLS should do it), or save up 20%.