I've converted most of my properties to short-term rentals and have tripled my earning compared to long-term leases. 

I know it will happen eventually but that is a lot of money in premiums over the years.

(Converting the previous primary in to a rental.) only once did I have a lender literally call me a liar saying he wouldn’t give me a primary home loan when it was obviously going to be a rental.  

Then I would pay them a set amount per month to eventually pay off the HELOC.

Evenually if all goes well I would like to continue growing my portfolio and eventually expanding to different areas if all goes well. 

Neither is “better” — they just serve different goals.3) Keeping vs converting the current home:Turning your current home into a rental can work well if the numbers still make sense after financing costs and management — otherwise it can quietly become a drag on flexibility.Since you have Michigan ties, it’s worth at least underwriting a few MI scenarios side-by-side with a CA option to see how they compare in terms of cash flow, leverage, and complexity.

We typically never see more than three months requestedThis is what we typically hold as for DSCR we originate and eventually will sell it off to an institution.

No claim that this produces “the answer” — just a way to make tradeoffs explicit.I eventually put this into a spreadsheet so I could sanity-check my intuition.

The numbers for tax/ins were an attempt to be conservative since I’ll eventually lose homestead exemption and need a different ins policy.

I’m extremely early in my real estate investing journey and currently focused on learning the fundamentals the right way before jumping into my first deal.My long-term goal is to build a small rental portfolio, starting with a duplex or small multifamily through house hacking, and eventually exploring value-add strategies like BRRRR once my foundation is solid.