@Erin Auman all is well remember one day at a time and this too shall pass if you can keep on learning and developing your business model

:>)If you had model match sales you don't need much help figuring it out, but obviously you don't.

I think i'll do my best to put together a spreadsheet modeling the financial outcome of various scenarios1.

@Joshua Zastrow, I actually ran a regression model with annual Census Bureau data from 2005-2017 to answer this exact question.I wanted to see what actually correlated to rising rents.

I also have a few more questions to ask.Things that I have learned:Property Condition - Fixer uppers are not a model choice for the VA loan, because it is risky to spend additional money to fix up a property to VA standards (fixing up and then buying with the VA loan)Jumbo VA Loan - The SFR limit on the VA loan always applies.

It is a very detailed class where we spend about 1.5 hours going through a model of buying four properties. https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/713742-free-denver-house-hacking-class

Use Arbitrage to stress test your business model- number of rooms, location, etc3. 

To know whether or not a property is a good deal you have to stretch your calculations to a 1-year, 10-year and 30-year projection that includes rent increases and appreciation.My business model is to double my investment capital every 1 to 2 year, or to earn a 50% to 100% return on my investment capital every year.

The annual numbers cover every MSA in the country.The first thing I did was create a regression model to see what metrics actually track with rising rent over the years 2005-2017 (2017 is most recently published ACS).

It's been functioning as a rented house-hack and we've been model tenants - never late, do our own minor repairs, etc. - and the PM and owner seem to appreciate us, such that they haven't increased our rent beyond the first year.