Are people just buying hoping they can juristically increase rents or hoping that the market will continue to go up in this town?

https://www.har.com/content/newsroom/Houston Real Estate Highlights in July: Single-family home sales rose 9.1 percent year-over-year, with 8,108 units sold;Days on Market (DOM) for single-family homes remained unchanged at 48 days;Total property sales increased 8.5 percent, with 9,559 units sold;Total dollar volume jumped 11.4 percent to nearly $2.8 billion;The single-family home median price rose 5.9 percent to $243,500, reaching a July high;The single-family home average price also achieved a July record, rising 2.4 percent to $305,910;Single-family homes months of inventory was at a 4.2-months supply, down fractionally from 4.3 months last July, but nonetheless at the highest level since August 2017;Townhome/condominium sales rose 6.1 percent, with the average price up 6.9 percent to $215,110 and the median price up 9.3 percent to $165,000;Leases of single-family homes fell 1.9 percent with the average rent up 5.6 percent to $1,916;Volume of townhome/condominium leases dropped 6.6 percent with the average rent up 7.7 percent to $1,666.

I realize this will increase the mortgage payment and eat into any profits if we rent, but we can easily afford it and would like to get the sucker paid off.Any and all advice is super appreciated!!

You got to look at areas of town that are showing signs on improvement not because of the hurricane but new construction, building permit increase. 

It is rented for $1650/month (could probably increase it if need be).

Plus you have to factor in fuel and increased service expense on the car as well. 

That may not be increasing but I don't think it's going backwards either.https://m.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2018/08...Do you all get the same positive stability vibes from this "all is terrible in housing" article?

I would increase your CapEx and Repair reserves to 10%/5% respectively.  

And you're going to very clearly imply that they should be grateful about it, because after all, increasing these people's "financial literacy" and their "economic stability" is a good thing.This is going to happen in Georgia, a state where your great-grandfather would have had the legal right to buy their great-grandmother and do whatever he wanted to her, your grandfather might very probably have been able to get away with murdering their grandfather with a knife or a rope as long as he had some good friends with him and a sheet over his head, and your father would have had a chance to live in a neighborhood which allowed him to borrow money to buy a house while their father lived in a neighborhood where a mortgage could be refused due to an arbitrary red line on a map.I do not believe this is going to go over well.

I read online that a rent increase of 10% or more requires a 60-day written notice.