I wanted to make sure I had everything lined up perfectly.

You sound like a perfect candidate!

While living/working in the house I will be working on it/upgrading it to gain equity and hopefully the house will appreciate (in the Portland OR metro area it should).In order to find the perfect house with seller-financing available, I'm studying hard so that I can pretty much mimic what investors do with these kind of properties by sending out mailers/yellow letters to get a bunch of calls/responses and find the perfect location in the Portland metro area.

I found this online the other day about why Hawley is perfect for a day trip. http://www.onlyinyourstate.com/pennsylvania/winter-day-hawley-pa/Hawley and even Honesdale is growing right now.

Practice makes perfect!

Perfection of a deed, which is the recording in public record, is not the conveyance event.  

@Melanie CampbellI think that Rocky's advice is perfect.

Short Term Rental host and Airbnb Superhost here.The BIGGEST thing about doing Airbnb out of your personal home, is you will have to make sure your home is perfect--all the time.

The main advice I have is to jump in and not wait till you know everything, or till a "perfect opportunity" comes your way!

Roof is going to last you about 30 years.Hot Water Tank is going to last you about 15 years.Furnace is going to last you about 40 years.Each of the following big ticket items are going to cost a similar price when you need to pay a contractor to replace them.Roof is going to cost around $5,000 depending on the size.Hot Water Tank replacement is going to cost around $1,000. (40 gallon tank)Furnace replacement is going to cost around $3,000.So with that information in mind it's pretty easy for an investors to break down what they are getting when looking at potential investment properties for purchase.