I just want to see how it's worked for people who have actually gone through it. 

Michael, check out furnishedfinder.com/statsType in your zip code and you’ll get a good bit of data on what people are looking for.Then, I would go on furnishedfinder.com and look around as if you were wanting to rent a MTR yourself.

I assume that Insurance will provide me protection against specific risks but not provide liability protection to personal assets. 

If yes, you may want to consider doing a 1031 exchange for the additional properties.If we assume a 4% appreciation on assets, If you hold onto the $170,000 property, you can assume there will be about 6,800 of annual appreciation.If you have $600,000 of assets, you may experience $24,000 of annual appreciation.You may experience less cash flow but there is a higher potential of appreciation.Best of luck to you.

I would assume the mortgage would need to be changed because it's a personal loan. 

People pick rentals based on location and price.    

Type doesn't matter.What gets people confused sometimes are the terms "like kind" and "qualified use". 

God bless them, they are often wonderful waiters and hair dressers and service people and . . . .  

I only ask, because most people are not sitting on $400k cash (obviously this is just my example) to effectively buy a new house without a mortgage.  

Get the people who are potentially making the decision to give you more details and specifically what it would take to get it done.