Do you have a tax advisor? 

If you want a policy for leveraging into real estate, stay away from infinite banking advisors.

Very large, well established, stock markets will have liquidity issues (start of the trading day, end of the trading day, power outages, extreme events, public announcments). 

Therefore I do not have the minimum 2 year established business history which some loans that offer a low down payment may require.  

Hello Matthew,As long as your wife has legitimate self-employment income she can establish and contribute to the Solo 401k plan.

I'm ready to go to the next level and have resources to do so, but first I'd like to establish the foundation for the business and financing.Thanks for your help!

Dustin, good stuff above, but you really need to visit your lender(s) to establish your strategy, just because fannie may take 10 doesn't mean you can get ten, things change regionally and from lender to lender.

Looks like you got a great lesson from some professional tenants.You pretty much answered your own questions, never sublease unless you fully vet out the applicants before they move in and "establish residency" and second why take in any tenant referenced from an already bad tenant.As for the utility you should call up the utility directly but since I am assuming this is a single family residence.

Once those are established I suppose its a good time to set up a business account with a bank.

Establishing policies, procedures and systems to let your employees run the properties the way you want.