That sounds like some solid advice to make conservative estimates and keep me in the black.

Either way my numbers take into account the higher of the two to be conservative.

Has anyone created a lease that made all parties jointly responsible, but allowed one to stay for, say, 6 months, and after the 6 months, the tenants staying for 12 months become the only responsible parties? 

I have a wife who is very conservative and she has been saving money for about 25 years.  

I tried to be conservative but Im not sure how well I did.

A question I have is that if the purchase contract you use with the seller says "Seller agrees that the buyer 'me' may place signs and show the property immediately upon acceptance of this contract by both parties

That's if the bank actually appraises your primary for $400k (my experience with HELOC appraisals are drive bye only and very conservative low values).You could get an investor loan, max LTV is 80% with rates about 1/2 to 1% more than national mortgage rates.I personally think that the interest rates would work out to be the same, with the investor residential loan being the only fixed rate loan.  

The rent rates have dropped 15-20% in the passed year so using these lower rents, I hope that if I can make it work today than it will cashflow awesomely in a year or two because the units used to be rented for 1650 and 1400.Purchase price = 410,000 (conservative)1.5 year old house, Upper unit is 3/1, lower is 2/1.

I am currently employed as an engineer and working on paying of my first home.My plan is to finish paying off my primary residence before moving on to conservative buy and hold investment in a couple nearby cities. 

This will tell you which position the foreclosing party is in.Is the HOA the plaintiff?