They key is how fast you want to churn cash and what does your day job throw off in income??

I am in Lake Havasu City, Arizona and we have a SHORTAGE of vacation rentals for summer and winter visitors.... just thought I'd throw that out there. 

Throwing your numbers into the 50% rule looks like you would net a negative $55/month.I would ask for the last few years of the P&L.

There is normally a service I like to use called spaminator, which sets up basically throw away email accounts.

I am also going to study real estate markets in Iowa in an attempt to locate a the right market for me to move to when I get back home.I have found that a focused effort is much more effective than blindly throwing darts.

If they still won't bite and are good prospects, I'll throw them in to get the lease signed.About 70% of the tenants will pay extra for them by going this route.

After thinking about it I realized that there was no other bidder as this had happened to often and bidders are not going to throw away the 2500 deposit that easy .On another occasion my partner was called by the company and was asked if he still wanted a home he was out bid on and he excepted at his bid price and sent the $5000 deposit.

There was a followup thread you may want to read:  Making Money on Deals that Most Investors Throw In the Trash1)  This was never answered. 

I am basically throwing options at you that have already been said, but here are the choices I think make the most sense:1 - rent for a period of time (yes from somebody else) - this allows you TIME to plan more carefully2 - take over one of your own rental units (you said they were rented cheap, so they don't provide much benefit as currently used anyway)Either way, you take care of the immediate need to have a roof over your head while at the same time buying yourself a little time to plan more carefully.  

When you go to a bank for financing they're not running those kinds of numbers because what's really important is that they're comfortable the property will throw off enough cash flow to cover debt service with a margin of safety and be worth enough that they can recover their principal if you default.