I am currently looking at whether I should increase the rent or not.

http://www.har.com/content/newsroom/Houston Real Estate Highlights in October Single-family home sales continued their post-Hurricane Harvey rebound as volume rose 7.5 percent year-over-year with 6,381 units sold;Single-family home sales remain 2.8 percent ahead of 2016’s year-to-date volume;Total property sales increased 6.6 percent with 7,614 units sold;Total dollar jumped 10.8 percent to $2.1 billion;The single-family home median price rose 3.9 percent to $226,491, which represents an October high;The single-family home average price increased 2.7 percent to $285,858, also the highest level for an October;Single-family homes months of inventory grew year-over-year to a 3.9-months supply, but is down from a 4.3-months pre-Harvey peak – the result of a surge in consumer demand for housing;Townhome/condominium sales rose 5.8 percent, with the average price down 1.1 percent to $195,393 and the median price down 3.1 percent to $153,000;Leases of single-family homes rose 13.6 percent with the average rent up 2.8 percent to $1,776;Volume of townhome/condominium leases jumped 34.8 percent with average rent up 2.9 percent to $1,533.HAR still encourages anyone who has housing available for temporary occupancy (up to 12 weeks) to please post it on our Harvey Temporary Housing page at www.har.com/temporaryhousing to provide housing to those in need.

I mostly did it to escape the black hole of renting, and I'm now working on increasing my income so that I can start buying rentals.

I'm working on increasing my income to hopefully invest in future properties, and trying to help my friends and coworkers on the path to home ownership since many of them are renters in their 20s and don't know the options that are really out there.Here is where I'm stuck: someone I know is currently renting.

In about four months I should be in the Jacksonville NC area, so I have become increasingly interested in that market.

I should have bought more and more aggressively when I started out 5 years ago (again due to view point as a hobby) and not because of price increases over that time, because thats 5 years of semi-passive income and appreciation.

I read early on that doing this increases on-time rent collection by 30%. 

Liabilities increase the basis in the partnership.The allocation of the loan might increases your basis in the partnership but not your partner. 

This price increase kicked me in the butt and made me do it.

Today, those Studios rent for $1,900 each.So each apts moved from $500 to $1,900 in 17 years for a increase in rent of $1,400.If you bought a cash flow property outside NYC that was cash flowing $500 per month, but only doubled in the 17 years to $1k per month, you would still be short $400 per month because your rent increased $1,400 versus your outside cash flow property which only increased $1k.I can't emphasize that if you instead bought our place to live here rather than rent, you should think of it as hey, I'm actually doing better than the above scenario of buying outside cash flowing properties!