It's a fantastic way to grow your portfolio while deferring taxes, but it requires careful planning and adherence to IRS rules. 

(I also would like a loan that doesn’t require a high down payment). 

I know DSCR loans are an absolute pain in the butt to shop around given there's basically no standardization on fees and terms.

@Ayyoub Reza in Michigan, if a lease is at least 12 months in length, you can charge tenants for maintenance and if not a health & safety issue, require them to fix it.Why would you have a lease end during the Oct-Feb timeframe, when it's the slowest time of the year for real estate sales & rentals?

Basically, it was one sentence saying they had a single option to renew the lease, with no other terms, timelines, or conditions.  

A 203k is a renovation loan which may be what you intend, but if you are going to remain active in the military, you won't be home enough to supervise an FHA 203k renovation which requires 4-8 inspections just on the FHA side and quarterly draws.

We require the tenants to prove a landlord liability policy for $100k.

I have an opportunity to purchase 2 homes that are side by side that need a little bit of work (minor stuff) for basically the price of one in my area.

That depends on deal to deal since the condition of each property and requirements of each seller will be different. 

So there are a few ways to look at this, the 1st question is are you sure your renovation’s will double the property value, most renovations on primary residences, your lucky to get 60-70% of the dollar cost back out upon sale, so really nail down your comps, than you have basically a math problem if your rate on your primary goes up how long if ever before that extra payment is more than 400k in taxes, that’s just a simple calculation to help you decide, but I suspect you actually have a different question here, from a purely financial perspective my guess is the best option is to do anything to avoid that tax hit, but one of the reasons to make money is to spend it on things that you enjoy, based on your overall financial picture and a subjective view of how much enjoyment you will get out of a renovated home, you should decide if you want to roll your profit into another deal or “cash-out” your winnings, I love cars and I’m willing to spend more than is fiscally smart on them because they bring me joy, there is nothing wrong with that, but i don’t think it’s a fiscally smart choice, without knowing your exact property id imagine a renovation would fall into that category, so that’s the terms I would use to decide.