@Evan Kraljic you have nailed it! 

Lease agreement states security deposit would be used as an unpaid rent if there was early termination.Tenant decides to end lease early making final payment August 1st and moving out the 3rd, I find a tenant September 1st but at a rent payment of $700 instead of $850  Does this tenant have the ability to get his security deposit refunded if it took a month to find a new tenant after he had left? 

If so, just make sure you don't sign anything in the title docs that states the title company and add any additional exceptions found during a final search.

I finally started to listen to those that were saying house hacking is a good start, so we started making some appointments to check out multi family homes in our area.

When you finish a unit (best around) and determine final rent based on research ask yourself "Would I pay $1550 a month to live here, with my family, with my children, etc?

Finally, I highly recommend that you visit some local real estate investors meetings in the areas you are interested in… talk to the people doing deals there and you will gain great insight into what’s happing and what type of deals are getting done ✔️ Hopefully you find this helpful and I look forward to your message!

John, what Steve said pretty much nails it. 

On the flip side you can airbnb it and save that capital for the final purchase down the line. * Wrap Around MortgageYou could work with your Mom to create a mortgage on the property that is larger than the currently mortgage amount, say $20k.

We started putting offers on houses in Big Sky and after getting under contract after our 11th offer, we finally thought we had one.

Think “Final Notice” I wrote an entire article on this concept.