I can't count the number of seemingly good applicants with their lives together have a POS baby daddy waving guns around on FB

Since I will need to purchase another home, I will not be able to pull the equity out to use as a down payment, but I do have another ~50k set aside for this.My current neighborhood has a number of rental homes now and they stay full but understand you cannot count on this.If push comes to shove and things get really bad, I could tap into home equity to get out of a bind, if say I have a bad tenet and need to cover the mortgage on rental home for many months and the extra money from rental doesn't cover it all.

With Fannie/Freddie whomever is on the loan...then that's who counts. 

Hope our paths cross again.

I'll add that rental income doesn't count as income for the retirement contributions.A Roth IRA is an individual account, so you make the contribution, not the employer.If you wanted to do an individual 401(k) you could do an employer and employee contribution.For a company, if you're just wanting someone to hold the account to invest in the stock market, I've liked working with Fidelity.

Seriously though, keep it, fix it right, comp the tenants a dinner and a movie or something to thank them for their patience, then kick back and count the dollars coming in. 

As soon as you take out the HELCO, the lenders typically count the total loan balance interest payment in your DTI, even if you aren't using.I have also run into banks not counting my rental income until I was a landlord for two years.

One good way to gauge the seller's candor and honesty is to ask them what work was done recently and cross-index it with what you find with the recorder.4) I'd also +1 the closing costs line item. 

Fingers crossed that it all goes well but I'm excited at the possibilities.

I don't count.