Our initial goal has been to buy a property every time the Army relocates me (roughly every two years) and rent it out afterward.

What will the rent be?

I heard about bigger pockets from a friend of mine that has successfully built and rented multiple properties in our area. 

We do a different version of BRRR it's Build - Rent - Refinance - Repeat.

Nonetheless, you can base the DSCR calculation on PadSplit rent (if there's a history of PadSplit income being produced) or short-mid-term market rent (an analysis done at the same time of appraisal).

You can simply request a separate check for the $100 increase to bring the total deposit in line with the new rent amount.

However, on the renting side, we have seen an increase in inventory of days on market too. 

Where are your scheduled gross rents and effective rents so far in the last T12 months so we can figure out offense and defensive strategies.These would be the questions we'd go through in planning your steps ahead.

I can't speak to that since it's all irrelevant on the master lease - we get our agreed-upon rent on the 1st each month and that's that.

But once I got the bills, I increased the rent with the tenant's approval and signed an addendum to the lease stating the rent increase would be X and the owner would take over utilities.