You should run a financial analysis to figure out if your funds will support the timeline or if you need to relax/tighten some parameters.When you do your financial analysis, look carefully at all your assumptions (rent price, vacancy, contingencies) and do some sensitivity analysis (ie. double the vacancy rate, or reduce rent 25%) to see how your model adjusts.People tend to be overly optimistic with plans and assumptions.

So the places I've stayed tend to have deferred maintenance and are not updated.

Houses at the $500k price point don't tend to be very good cash flow rentals,  unless you pull $5k/month in rent.  

We tend to focus on the burps and stay out of the cities for the most part, its worked well for us. 

Although I invest out of state, I am with @Jay Y, I tend to advise people to invest locally. 

This is very typical as the stock market tends to be a "leading indicator" of our investment market in general.  

I'm not knocking engineers, but they do tend towards a personality that takes great pride in figuring out complex issues by themselves.You ask how you can make him see reason.  

Students tend to hang lots of posters and knick-knacks; be hard on walls, doors,etc.  

Several credit checks from banks for the purpose of a mortgage in a short amount of time tend to get lumped together as one because you are probably shopping around for the best rate.

Another benefit is the larger loans tend to have a discount in rate.For example a loan of 3 million might have a fixed rate of 4.6% with a 30 year amortization due in 10 years.