I'm probably ok paying a little more and operating on smaller margins because of how hot the area is.

Can get you into hot water as far as Fair Housing Act as well. 

In your climate, I would probably use faced polyisocyanurate on the the external side of the wall assembly.Plan sounds reasonable ... the more insulation the better whether you live someplace hot or cold as it keeps the heat on the correct side of the wall.

Asheville is a hot market right now, so I am excited to learn from all of you as I prepare to purchase my first rental property by the end of this year (I wrote it down so it must be true, right?) 

Hi Robin,    That is a lot of work to do in a hot market where you may get out bid in the end. 

Lending companies, many out there, including the one Im at will be pulling skip traces and background reports on your prior properties that have been linked to your name in the past and if you were doing FNMA loans on these in the past these properties will be 99.99% linked to your social sec #.The only advantage of switching properties that were investment use to begin with on fnma loans to commercial loans is that you get to free up your 10 slots per social security # (10 for each partners if married and title and loans were done separately on each spouses Social).If you're converting from a primary to a rental you get to use rental income to offest the affect of having the entire mortgage hit your qualification and in this limited sense you can say yeah you improved your DTI.

Just 3-6 months ago, crypto was the hot new thing with a lot of BP'ers chastising conservative-minded folks like myself for not jumping on the crypto train. 

im looking at a house right now that is currently a 2 family but has only 1 steam boiler which is only 8 years old. there is also only 1 hot water heater as well. it is all natural gas and the previous owner paid for water and heat themselves.i wasnt sure what others do in this situation from a landlord standpoint.1. do you raise rents to cover yourself for the winter?

If it's hot I wear shorts.

We recently sold the house to cash in on the hot housing market in our area, with the plan to invest the income in to a new house to renovate as well as a small multi-family.