Not a problem for one QB Desktop subscription, but after I added it up, including one $200/month subscription, we would have had to pay nearly $5000 per year in QB Online subscriptions to match the capability of QB Desktop!!!

They can look up the sales for last 6 months in any area and then from those sales pick out the houses with similar square footage, same bed/bath count, and then average those sales out and that's your ARV.Florida can be rough. 

Converting it to a rental projected to rent @ $4500 monthly.

You could pull out $150,000 via a HELOC at 8% interest (about market rate right now) and the monthly interest only payment would be $1,000.

Being that a yearly lease on a condo might be $800 a month for a two bedroom not on the beach, why purchase that when you can buy something closer to the beach that rents for $1,000 a week?

The majority of advisors recommend that you hold property for either 12, 18 or 24 months in order to prove your intent to hold for investment purposes. 

Does it take months to go through the town municipality?

Many policies have zero problem with 3-6 month vacancies.

I am military, and from what I’ve read there is an exclusion of capital gains taxes out to 15 yrs vs the normal 5 for military members.However, I only lived at the property for 18 months, not the 2 years required. 

You should have at least 20% for the down payment and 6 months of reserves.