To me a successful house hack is being able to live with your net mortgage payment being lower then it would cost you to rent the same property. 

San Antonio is known for its relatively lower cost of living compared to many other major cities in Texas.

The area offers higher-end flips but comes with a higher buy-in cost.

Single family homes have the benefit of the tenant paying all utilities, taking care of all landscaping/snow, and lower cost replacement when things go wrong (a roof on a single family home is a lot less then on a large multi).

I would ask the lender you applied with to disclose how they calculated your DTI... sometimes they fail to add back in depreciation or deduct costs from your schedule E like tenant turnover, improvements, etc. that shouldn't be included in the DTI calculation. 

I've seen a lot of Allstate rental properties with ACV or market value coverage rather than Replacement cost and other tricks to reduce coverage levels.  

When you sell the property and gain the difference between the sale price and the cost to you, that's profit.Net profit to you on a rental is the cash flow. 

Rising insurance costs are probably the number one driver right now of our overall expenses.

If it’s a safety issue, I’ll of course make sure the premises are as safe as they were before any required maintenance was done, but she is now suggesting that if I don’t reimburse her for those specific anchors, I am violating fair housing laws for familial status and/or tenants rights regarding not incurring costs for required repairs.

They cost 25k each on average and so far they’ve been easy to self manage out of state.