Hi Brandon,If I understand your question correctly, I can tell you I have a strong preference for renting duplexes.

My quick opinion is that it is a great niche, but just like every other niche it is a fair amount of work and risk. 

Most tenants from my experience in property management prefer a lease rather than month to month as it offers them security of a home for that term.

I prefer to use my equity line for rehab purposes than for new purchases.  

To make a long story short, I concluded my preferred strategy was to buy and hold long term and pursue the development of a rental empire.

I think the crux of my concern is that i would prefer to buy and hold and repeat, but I get the impression he and his wife are concerned about being able to make a clean/concise split at the end of the "sale" which would require a flip. 

Do you advise having my real estate agent verbally make these to the seller and then we put whichever in writing they prefer?  

Renting when you first arrive would definitely be preferable as you can get an idea of which location you would like to purchase in.

You will lose money on this (hopefully you have the minimal resources for it not to bankrupt you) and for the rest of your life you'll tell anyone who listens that real estate is just a bad, bad, bad investment strategy.You jumped into a very tight, very difficult, very high-risk niche specialty without studying it carefully, without having worked with a more experienced investor, without a network and a team in place, without giving yourself a real chance to go through the learning curve.

There are different dog breeds that are preferred for different issues.