Am I too old to start?

[Charles Henning]

I am 51 years old and disabled. My primary (and currently only) source of income is SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance). My wife is currently unemployed, and has also applied for disability and her case is pending. she also has a couple of Worker's Compensation cases pending.

I have a limited amount (not quite 60k) in my 401k, but because I am disabled, I am able to withdraw the full amount of my 401k without any penalty, I only have to pay the upfront taxes (20% Federal, 5% State).  Other assets include a home I own in Idaho (my mom rents this) that is worth $144k and I owe $91k on it.  My mom is 75 and pays me $850 a month (very low I know) which is enough to pay the mortgage and a little bit extra (about $80).  I also own a home in Oklahoma, where I live, which we rehabbed for ourselves.  We put about $50k into the house, and it should be worth about $70k.  

Because I am disabled, I cannot do any of the work myself, so would be hiring a property management company (PMC), contractors (I know a good one that works cheap), and my role would only be buying properties and arranging rehabs and assigning them over to the PMC.  As long as I don't do any of the value-add work, any income generated should be passive and would not affect my disability payments.

My wife and I expect to receive about $30-45k in settlements for her worker compensation cases.  

My plan would be to not put at risk any funds paid to us for disability.  This is how my wife and I would live, strictly off of that fixed income.   I would like to use my 401k and workers compensation awards as my initial investment, and start generating passive income which would be reinvested back into the business to acquire additional homes.  My target is to look for distressed homes for about 25k or less that can be rehabbed such that I have about 40k-45k total invested.  

I would buy the homes with cash, rehab them and hire a PMC to deal with the rest of it.  After about 12 months of income, mortgage the home to fund additional properties, again paid with cash and rehabbed.

My overall goal would be to have around 3k-5k a month in passive income for when I hit 65 (about 12 years).  

Am I too old to start this process?  Is my plan reasonable?  Are there better strategies I might use?

Charles