You avoid 8-12 months of pain having to deal with builder delays, ground breaking due to winter/hard ground, costs of materials or shortage of inventories, etc.If that’s not your cup of tea you still have Charlotte, Duram and Fayetteville all offer some great sale prices on SFR's and 2-4 units for STR/LTR.Owning a home is a plus to get started if there is equity to use and you want to stay cash fluid just pull out some cash through a refinance or Heloc to cover the DP on the new REI.

This is a 2400 sq ft 2 king suite cabin loaded with amenities including an indoor heated pool similar to one of mine.  

But say a $10k heating system that should last 25 years (300 months), that alone is $33.33 per month ($10,000/300), even if it was just replaced yesterday since it will need to be replaced again in 300 months.

A month later, not much had been accomplished, and now the workers couldn't work because they had no heat, and we couldn't get any fuel, so they ordered an electric furnace, which was just installed last week.

Some of our investment properties that are AirBnbs today may become our American homes for couple of months per year each as when our kids are all entering school we would like to be more fluid.

I would venture to say it has everything to do with the draw of renting a house, in the heat, and not having a pool to cool-off. 

In the mean time, I removed the LP heater and the leased LP tanks, so there is no more gas used in the place (so the CO part of the alarm shouldn't be an issue) and installed a mini-split heat pump in its place.I hadn't heard anything from the tenant but, when they moved out last week, I saw that they had again disconnected the alarm in the bedroom.

Do not put more down if you can save it for renovations or to keep as an asset since its better to be cash fluid. 

They tend to heat up when rowhouses cool off and vice versa.

PMI is not always a deal killer if you can save funds and stay cash fluid or put money towards renovations and less on the down payment.You can also use a Vacation home to buy out of state and only put 10% down but must be a single family, Condo, Townhome (No 2-4 units).