If you don't use it - don't take the $, but keep funding your maintenance bucket so if a HVAC dies (or other major event) you have funds to address this event.If you are using a property manager (not hard to manage your own if you properly screen tenants & handymen), consider that if their efforts result in high maintenance or repair costs, or they rent the home for under market rent, their exposure is low - but these factors greatly impact your return.  

. $1,000 bucks sounds like a drop in the bucket to me, considering that other strategies would require parting with a lot more capital, with greater risk.

When I lived in Cleveland 13 years ago, we left bc it literally was a rust bucket city.

The powers that be always try to keep the crabs fighting rather than focused on escaping the bucket...

Two options: buy a 5 gallon bucket and paint all the walls the same colour or call around to a few paint stores (usually actual paint stores, not big box stores that sell paint) and ask for mistints. 

Not knowing anything about the comps or value of the house it seems like $600 is a drop in the bucket of the total value of the home.

My plan for whatever I do end up with is to hold for decades to come, use the cash flow for retirement once it's paid off, and probably pass it down to my kids once I kick the bucket.

We're not really counting on TSP...great if it is there, but it is just another in a set of those retirement "buckets" that everybody talks about.We basically used the TSP combined with the VA to get into the current owner-occupied property. 

One way a friend made buckets of money was to leverage interior upgrades and amenities to increase rents.  

Who knows when their water heater will kick the bucket?