What you are planning to do is really sound and a great retirement move, if you do it deliberately; if you allow circumstances to take control you could wind up badly hosed.

After doing this for 20 years and doing 3,000 transactions, I realized that most associations have too much control and have the power to increase fees when they please, making it very hard to determine what your actual cash flow will be long term.

Put the responsibility of move out on the seller, as you have no legal control.

If you haven’t been to it already, the Bigger Pockets blog features links to their fantastic podcast and many great articles: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/The site has quite a few tools that can be helpful for new members.

We received our certificate of occupancy in 2017 so our building is not under city or state rent control.

That's a fantastic way for military folks like us to get started in real estate. 

You're telling the seller that neither offer is final, inviting them to go so far as (and they will) combine the best (to them) of each offer, and thus taking control over the process away from you.

What if I find a potential rental property that is in fantastic condition and it doesn't lend itself to rehab and therefore hard money loan with refi?

The biggest knock on BC for investing is that rent control makes cash flow a challenge. 

I have two keys... a master key that opens every door on the system and a control key so I can change the cores.