Isn't that excessive for closing costs?

Then any excess would go to the borrower.

People you can trust w/o excessive management / oversight are worth more than the cheapest contractor.  

This property has tons of excess land and paved parking, and just anecdotally it would seem possible to extend either one of the structures to add 1-2 additional units.  

However we are objectively near the end of an economic cycle where easy borrowing and excess liquidity has driven the prices of many things to near limits.

Are you sure you cannot cut any excess spending out of your budget and make lifestyle changes to meet that goal quicker.

With all that being said, all I can say is if you and your wife make $150k a year and you have no savings because your buying this or that, paying off debt excessively (which I commend), etc, etc; you both may not have the best grip on your finances as a unit.

I don't think the HOA board is particularly interested in kicking my tenants out to the curb or fining me $100 per day, they want to get rid of excessive rental units in that community. 

For a rental property business, they include taxes, insurance, management, maintenance, advertising, office supplies, entity maintenance, legal fees, evictions, setout fees, damage done by tenants (in excess of the security deposit), lawsuits, capital expenses (not technically an operating expense), etc, etc, etc (I could go on and on).Cash flow for rentals is determined by subtracting the operating expenses and the debt service from the gross rents.The NUMBER 1 reason that newbies fail is that they don't understand operating expenses and therefore have a negative cash flow.Let's look at a few things that were said in the previous posts:so I am taking the monthly rent, cut it in half (50%) and then subtract my monthly insurance and tax bill and am now using that as my "Misc" monthly expense.

We just include water in the rent, estimated at an allowance of $40 per month (or whatever), and then have a clause that if there's excessive usage in one month bringing the average above that, we contact them and if it continues, they will be charged.