I have asked my tenants to confirm their contact info and names of all people living in the house including name and age of their children. 

My plan was to start selling a house or 2, in maybe 8 months once the tenant pays down the mortgages a bit more.

Are you talking about your purchase of another property in this statement or did you accept a 2nd offer to sell on the same house and mistaken say seller instead of buyer???

I am telling anyone that will listen that they should be buying houses now.

For example, a distressed house may cost 200k and if fixed sells for 350k, but it needs 100k in work so the spread is 50k and then work in all the holding costs and closing costs and if there is any hiccups you are under water. 

We had used Home Depot and Lowe’s, and the house was still not done.  

To find a house where the seller is willing to sell it to you Sub2 the existing loan you need to do quite a bit of marketing.

You can work with an accountant to work backwards and he can guide you of how much of a house you need to buy to get your income to the lower tax bracket / 12% / 10% / 0% bracket.

Should i use part of a home equity loan to put a down payment on another house to rent out? 

-it seems like you may be interested in house hacking.