However, the property I'm looking at is larger than other houses, and to make it a viable investment, I'd need to rent it out for about $2,600 per month.My concern is that anyone renting this property could instead take out a mortgage on the same house, with monthly payments exceeding $2,000.

Here in San Antonio we are perfecting systems for doing un-accompanied (no agent present), vacant home showings.  

If you haven't noticed, when you ask about investing out-of-state the Columbus mafia joins the chat and turns it into a joke, but other than that this is a good place to start (and Columbus is a good market, but seriously...).Your post is a little disjointed though.

We are in a great position financially with no debt other than our mortgage and this move will be happening at the time of my promotion, so we will be able to afford that rather easily.

Move to an area with higher population (with hopefully more opportunities)  buy a house and start my business with say, $60k-$80k less. 

And some of these loans are for 30 years – that’s longer than most businesses and longer than most marriages!

Nothing is better than your own spreadsheets, but the truth is that spreadsheets and tools and programs are the biggest cause of analysis paralysis in the business.

The filings cost more and the process is a little slower than 35 days, but much faster than 6 months and far more consistent.

Also my credit score are 820 across the board.  

They are "okay" for generalized information, but if you are putting money on a property, in my opinion you want better analysis than those provide.