At the moment, Buy and Hold seems like it makes the most sense for me.

@Ned Carey thank you for the clarification, it was all making better sense until you wrote ..."

However, I think I could simply rent out the other two rooms for about 600-650 a month to individual renters, so while the property isn't hitting the 1% rule, it does seem to make sense from a house hacking perspective.

Would it make sense to find a hard money lender for a bridge loan to purchase the property in my husbands and my name- then sell my parents the property within 4-6 months in the 1031?

I'd like to find out if working with private investors would make sense for us.Say I wanted to offer a mortgage on occupied rental properties.

I know there are institutional funds (Blackstone probably being the largest) but haven't found any that would make sense for the high net worth individual investor.

Especially if you have mature trees on the property, you'd want to inspect lines that were that age if you were keeping the property.If sewer line problems were a common occurrence in the neighborhood and having had them checked could be used as a selling feature, great.In other words, no, don't do it.

I just don't want to tie up someone's time or make an implied commitment until I have a better sense of the market.  

In my first locale I've got a handyman (will find another 1 or 2, just in case), a PM who can run errands for me on a per-visit basis (I am not paying a PM in the normal sense though), a cleaning company and few other things.

Thanks for the input.All,If i can get it approved (i.e. the repairs aren't that crazy - but i haven't walked through the house yet), would it make sense to use a mortgage lender for both the purchase and the eventual refinance?