One beauty of real estate is the leverage of debt.

These factors help create a ceiling effect--where, no matter how much the house is worth, there's a limit on how much you can charge in rent.And, as you mentioned--if leverage is involved, the debt service of a more expensive property often overshadows how much you can charge in rent.These factors contribute to rent not increasing proportionately with the price of the house (and there are probably other factors too, that I'm just not thinking of at the moment...haven't had my coffee yet).Having said that, there are some extremely niche markets with rental properties that cater to multi millionaires, and which are extremely expensive (certain areas of LA, for instance...probably the French Riviera --where there are probably lots of transient tenants worth tens or hundreds of millions)...but, those types of markets are obviously the exception to the rule...Good luck out there!

I'm only interested in the city of Dallas at the moment

Beautiful!

Would anyone advise taking out a loan with 0% interest on first year to get this work done at this moment or should I wait until I bring back up my reserve?

The rent-to-one option would be ideal for me, since I don't have the cash for a down payment at the moment.

That’s the beauty, or curse of capitalism/free market.

It was a beautiful unit but there was an infestation of ants on the second day of our stay and the dryer didn’t work.

Being HH#2, healthy savings will will cover for those oh crap moments that always come up

I know people who have bought new, beautiful, multi-million dollar, "turn key" luxury homes only to have to deal with major problems in the first few years of ownership.Obviously, old houses come with their own issues (asbestos, LBP, funky floorplans, and the all time most reprehensible sin against humankind: the carpeted bathroom) …but, if you know how to identify and manage these issues, they’re usually things that can be fixed…plus, there’s the satisfaction of saving a cool old house!