You can not rely on your lease languageas it may be in violation of state regulations.

As for credit score,  I don't rely on set number but more importantly patterns that show up on the credit report. 

Your obligation is to your sons and yourself and this tenant’s behavior will cost your sons money; they are relying on you “feeling bad” to prevent you from forcing them to do what they should.

Do not rely on it for legal advice.

That just goes to show that you can't always rely on appreciation. 

In my specific market areas its about 125-50 per sqft to build but the market is selling around 250 per sqft for brand new apt's.It Sounds like the play in the mid west markets is to buy way below intrinsic value and do a repositioning instead of relying on the market value to give you equity slowly over time.

The information contained in this post is not to be relied upon.

I'm not interested in only relying on real estate for retirement income (though plan for it to be the bulk of it).We have a one year old child (and plan to have one or two more) and, consequently, desire to have a 'lower-risk' approach to financing our daily lives (e.g., steady income, benefits, etc) until our children go to college (as opposed to trying to finance our lives mostly/entirely with real estate right away).We make roughly $100k combined and can afford a new 5% down payment each year (but not a new 25% DP yearly... unless daycare costs drastically change!).

If I had multiple properties or relied on the income I'd be less likely to do it. 

I just wish that people in your industry would DESIGN something more affordable, efficient, and reliable and SELL it to us voluntarily, instead of relying on big government to force us to buy.