I had formed a pretty good relationship with my landlord at the time since I wasn’t a dirt bag and proactively informed him of little stuff and took care of many things myself.

Goody bags, luvum. 

Right now I'm in the process of re-evaluating my life and working on eliminating all the unnecessary spending, while being a sponge to everything and everyone that's in this beautiful world of real estate investing.I work full-time as the lead Motion Graphic Artist for PlayStation.

I was working with a loan officer who is also a BPer and he worked to get another appraiser scheduled while I buttoned up everything in the building, styled it to make it beautiful (great for the pics for listings) and, based on a tip from one of the BP forums, I created a property package with a listing of all the improvements, the costs, the vendors who did the work, comps in the area, the rent roll, pictures of the before and afters, etc. which I handed to the new appraiser when he showed up.

So it all boils down to which makes more financial sense to you and your wife; getting your first home which will be a beautiful liability or make the big step towards passively securing your family's financial future and establishing cash flowing portfolio.

A tenant paying $3 or $4k/month will expect all this stuff to be functional and beautiful all the time. 

This is a "turn-key" investment, meaning the home is in beautiful condition, no immediate repairs/upgrades needed, and it has a solid quality renter in it. 

Beautiful place but like you said there’s a lot of units going up.

I bought the doublewide 3/2 for $14k and my total monthly housing expense including power & w/s/g was less than $300/mo.  5 yrs later we moved up when we had 3 dozen rentals.I would add 2 other big factors in reducing our living expenses- driving a reasonable car with no payment & brown bagging my lunch. 

They need to be responsible pet owners and pay for their flea bags.