Once you’ve educated yourself, you’ve put yourself in a position to take calculated risks — you know there is risk involved, but you’ve done your research and understand that there is a higher chance of the investment working out in your favor than there is of losing money.

currently if I rent this place out with piti and hoa dues id be losing about $100 a month, so it’s tempting to refinance to a lower payment since this will be a full time rental soon and it’d be nice to cash flow a bit.

Should we prepare for a possible downturn and me losing my job or look for that first property?

You're not concerned if you're losing money?

Building equity is not automatic...but losing it can be.

YES, you lose the revenue and the cost of running it, as well as risk of running afoul w the EPA or local government, and the eventual repairs/ replacement costs of the facility. 

Question 2If(or when) the appraisal comes in lower than $400k combined(lets say $360k) and so assuming the bank will now not loan $300k at 75% LTV per the AOS, would I be able to ask the seller to lower the asking price and if they don't (and I don't want to pay up the $40k difference), could I back out of the deal without losing my 12k total deposit?

So as long as you break even or don’t lose much and have learned something do what you want.

In general, if it's losing money from day one, I'd need a pretty compelling reason. 

I didn't want to lose earnest money so I justified the purchase mentally not the best idea I ran what if number based in what I knew and I tried to be really realistic about it.