Keep the boiler for now and reduce the temperature. 85 degrees is outrageous.

This way, he would try to reduce costs where possible to maximize profits.

Raise the rent up to the market rate (hopefully that's more than $25) and try and reduce any of your expenses. 

I think if I can show that nurses who want to own a home and start a family will have an easier time doing so in Houston, that will reduce the friction that is keeping them from taking the plunge and moving cross-country. 

It certainly reduces the number of showings to the truly motivated buyers.  

However, it would also increase the risk as your cash flow would be reduced and you would now have a leveraged asset.

You might talk to the broker that helped you buy the house and see if they'd do  reduced listing fee  if you also used them to buy the next place.

There's a limit of $2 million, though, and if you go over that, the $500K amount gets reduced.  

They involve personalities, emotions, finances, legalities, changing goals and dreams and too many moving parts to reduce the transaction to slapping a bar code on a house and selling it on Amazon.But hey, what do I know? 

That house afforded us a HELOC we used for DPs, then we rented our primary out and moved to a doublewide to reduce our shelter expenses to less than $300/mo