For the experienced investors regularly using hard or private money would you foresee any issues in borrowing money from an out of country investor looking to do the same as the OP?

With regular inspections, I'm not as worried about using all of the security deposit for damage, but I have had the "by the way, I'm moving and I'm using my security deposit as last month's rent" situation thrown at me, despite the lease agreement stating the contrary.As a result, I have also gone to collecting last month's rent in addition to a security deposit upon move-in.

I wouldn't consider it dead in Lubbock necessarily as I'm sure there are properties out there that can attain 2%, but it's probably so infrequent these days, you'd be looking for months and months before even getting close to 2%.  

If I build and sell a condo on the other side of the lot, I would assume that the taxed value would remain the same (aside from the regular annual increases) for the original home and that the new owner would pay taxes only on the value of the second home ($300k) and no property taxes. 

I visit the ones near me somewhat regularly but I rarely visit any of the ones further out, if you have good management in place there really isnt a reason to visit other than to spot check once in a while to see if anything is degrading, I think you could visit less than 1x per year easily, I trust my MI property management so much that there are some properties I have never visited, granted those are cheaper single family properties.

I recommend regular price drops until it sells.

It will happen again, who knows when-it is a reverse Robin Hood; where they take from the regular guy/gal and give to the super rich.

I spoke with an insurance rep at State Farm and they stated that I would keep the regular insurance I have for my unit and if I am not providing the entire unit for rental then I don't need an LLC but I wanted to hear anyone's input on this and how I would go about it especially since I just bought the unit. 

After that, I would send a follow-up email regularly, probably every other week or month, and call every couple of months always during business hours.The reason for this is that, as a broker, the majority of my investor clients are constantly calling me. 

We're definitely going to do our taxes first and see how things shakeout there first with a conventional loan since we do have W-2 income to support a regular mortgage, just wasn't sure how over time these expenses writeoffs start to reduce your buying potential with conventional loans.