But if your husband is adamant about not leveraging your primary, you have to play the hand you are dealt.If you want to owner-finance your current primary, you'll gain cash flow (acting as the bank), but sacrifice the cash you want to use for another primary or investment property.

Analysis wise - theres a ton of variables that come into play when seeing how well a home will perform.

When it is a new development, it isn't uncommon to see someone use the date the Certificate of Occupancy was issued - perhaps that marks the "ready", but it still might not be "available".So you can certainly have a property in service in a given year, but not actually have any rental income - but certainly your facts and circumstances are much better if you can actually get a tenant in there, that (should) shore up your defense on that question ever coming up unless you are playing weird games just to get a given in service date for tax purposes.

Unsure how market will play out with elections. 

I thought maybe I could play a role by making a nice, comfortable place to live.

Let us know how this plays out!  

If any of the neighbors sit on the porch and play the banjo, I would avoid that area.

Finally have enough to consider making a play here and looking to find some locals and read further experiences here. 

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

So get your cash out and put into a good one, where that deal can recover the lost money and make more.You wouldn't keep putting chips into a bad hand in Poker, you'd fold.