The latter seems to provide a middle ground that could enable professional maintenance oversight while allowing me to retain some control, mainly through tenant communication and management portals like RentRedi.

We advertised as no pets allowed and that lost us a lot of lookers.

This allows you to gain experience and use profits from the first property for investments in Lafayette later.

These are 3% down and allow you to source your downpayment from gifts or grants as well.

One with 90+ members is great because it affords the HOA a lot of economies of scale with vendors thereby keeping HOA fees lower.Review the HOA financials and make sure they have a substantial reserve that would cover a hail storm deductible and/or other storm damage.Read the Bylaws to make sure they're rentable and check the pet limitations.Check the common grounds for any big ticket items that may need replaced soon.

If they file separately then only she can take the exclusion deduction on sale up to that 250k cap(since she did live in the home 24 months out of the past 5 years), and he cannot (in general). 

@Yoon Chong I do not think you will be sued, but it is worthwhile to have some type of coverage over the maximum deductible allowed.

Most lenders will not allow him to be on deed without being on the loan. 

Quote from @Julia France: I am new to the concept of bonus depreciation and trying to get a better understanding.Some of your questions are answered in this long post: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/51/topics/1121063-expla...And then there's an STR-specific issue of what people like to call "STR loophole"https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/51/topics/1122635-the-s...Other questions, specifically timing of your deductions, are case by case.

Have them sign an actual lease and then send them a legal 30-Day Notice to Quit (eviction) on day 59 of their stay.Doing this, will allow you to quickly start eviction process if they overstay and don't pay.