If you are getting good deals, if anything happens down the road you can always sell and recoup your investment.  

What would your road map for success be in my shoes?

I know it's a long and lonely road to build an audience for my own blog, but it's a platform for me to share great content with a loyal following of professionals that directly relate to me. 

I also used my VA loan, so I only had to pay closing costs of about $3.5k.Unfortunately, this area was in what’s called a “Mela-roos tax” zone for roads/neighborhood upkeep which added an extra $350/month to my PITI.Therefore, my total payments were $1600/month.When I moved in the summer of 2012, it looked like mortgage rates had sunken to about as low as they would go (I was wrong, they dropped another .75 basis points…but who can time the market).I decided that I would refinance to get a lower monthly payment.For $2k, I was able to reduce my monthly payments by $230.Add this to the fact that real estate prices were rising fast (my Ohio property was now worth about $95k and the one in California was at about $240K!).

(I can identify with that.  :-)   But truly, digging for information is one of the best skills that you, @Aaron Coplin can develop. 

However, the path of least resistance may lead us down the road that we wish we would have never traveled.  

If there is negative equity then the same dollars identified by that ratio will be a lower UPB percentage number.

Honestly, the more questions you ask, the more questions you will be able to answer down the road. 

Do some online researching about the economic realities, then plan a big road trip and check out a bunch of towns.

I had some REI knowledge but you basically paved the road to me and my families real estate investing strategy.