A court will require you to mitigate your damages, ie find another tenant. 

The way you document your intent is with all kinds of things - your past practice, current stated business model, actual rental and use, mitigating circumstances you can point to that require you to sell it, coresspondance with others, actual time owned, etc etc.Most folks feel comfortable at more than a year.

There has to be a business model in there somewhere that can mitigate those risks.That said, it sounds like the general consensus is that my PM needs to be the person who manages that risk for me, since I can't be there myself.James

I am actively searching for my first deal for a flip and I feel split between two schools of thought that I have heard through various BiggerPockets resources:School 1: get a property at a great discount and have a thorough understanding of rehab costs and ARV so you can ensure you make a profit and mitigate your risk.

We are hoping the education we have gained by doing this in real life will help mitigate the disaster it has been in the future.

They won't take you from rags to riches overnight but they can produce consistent (high) double digit returns with 10 year, non-recourse, 30 year amortization debt.There are no guarantees and some markets are definitely frothy and there are financing and property strategies to help mitigate the risk.

Not saying don't do it, just saying to keep a close eye on the downside risk and make sure you can mitigate it before you get drunk on the upside ROI potential.Finally, as an alternative, consider cash out refinancing the SFH equity and reinvesting that money instead of selling.

@Ryan Pubins The prepayment is in the loan docs, how can this be mitigated due to a rate reset?

One can mitigate that risk via hedging but even then there is risk. 

What are your opinions of renting a property for commercial leasing and use that property to sublease for an STR with Airbnb or VRBO.I imagine getting a landlord to agree to this could be a challenge but think you mitigate some of the cost of owning the property.