It was built by my father who was self employed as retirement income for him and my mother, who was a stay-at-home mother and also assisted him in his business.

If a good investment property gets listed you need to get on it pretty fast as the good ones do not stay long, hence the pre-approval letter.Good Luck!

I am able to support her being a full time stay at home mom and together we get to enjoy showing our little 11month old daughter why this world is such a beautiful and fantastic place to be.

Generally most people stay away from them but I have heard and spoken too people who have made a killing with townhomes.

As a fellow newbie I suggest doing three things to help you move forward:1- listen to the podcasts- they help you learn information you wouldn't even think of searching for2- attend Real estate meetings: you never know which contact will help you get your first deal.3- stay active in the forums asking and responding so you can learn and be more visible to others.Good luck and don't give up! 

I'd stay where you are and use your savings at EOY.I've never sunk tons into a new rehab on a rental. 

Our friends just suggested we looked into series-LLC- I'm going to research that and see if that's a better approach going forward.You can do a reverse entity search and find the owner of any LLC in Iowa- so you can "kind of" stay anonymous, but not all the way. 

I try to line up several showings in one day while I'm staying busy cleaning or repairing.

I'd be looking at $10k to replace all the windows and patio doors, or nearly $15k if I keep the arch design.The other alternative is of course to simply not replacing the windows, unfortunately one of the main selling points of the house are the views and the ugly aluminum windows get in the way of that.The property itself is one of the largest in the neighborhood(3500 sqft), the closest comp is considerably smaller(2800 sqft) and not freshly renovated sold for nearly $1m last year.

For that reason, this thread will take at least 6 months to complete, but stay with me.