Does anyone have a certain formula to determine the highest offer for a certain property which includes some upgrades?

Then you can crunch the numbers to see what it would cost to set up and operate vs. what it would bring in, enabling you to determine whether it's even worth the investment of time, money, and effort.If you get through all that and are actually making money, then you can worry about whether a CPA is necessary (usually not).

That way you have the best of both worlds, you get the cash you need to do more loans and the ability to pay it down faster if you want while being safeguarded with a low payment in down times. 

Neither party really has the ability to fully control the agenda so both are going to need to accept some significant compromise positions, and where that will fall is at this point just a pure guessing game.

My concern is that if I do a rental property before officially getting a mortgage on the home (we are already pre-approved and are saving for the downpayment when complete), this will affect my ability to get that mortgage for my primary residence when it comes time to close if my name is on loan. 

Be sure to determine if you are eligible for special depreciation or Sec. 179 expense on any CAPEX assets in the current year. 

Plug that into the numbers that you run to determine the cash on cash return.From a housing cost reduction perspective, compare the rental income to the cost of the mortgage, taxes, and other expenses to see the net cost of living there. 

I had the following question to determine if I am still within the window to take advantage of deferring my taxes or not.

The poor contractor gets 20 referrals and a bill for $800.

If they county/city will use the ARV to determine taxes, you should likely use that.