I am 17, have little money, and want to invest. How?

[John Haddad]

Hi guys, I am 17 and am just starting out in real estate. A little background on me-- I quit my landscaping job in August and started working for myself by starting my own landscaping business. I started it from absolutely nothing and since then I have done over 40k in business. I was on track to make around 100k but ended up losing a couple of the big contracts I was counting on due to poor circumstances which had set me back. Now it is the winter season and while most companies will plow snow, I can't be out from 1am-6am then still go to school at 7am and be able to function. So after reading rich dad poor dad I got the idea to start researching real estate investing as a way to generate long term passive income that I can use to support the family that I would like to have in the near future. Just recently I have partnered up with a couple of like minded people around my age and we are now all pursing this goal of being successful in real estate investing. Currently we have our eyes set in a previously blighted area which is now making a come back. We are trying to find multi family properties that we can buy, fix up, and rent out. We can't decide if we should spend twice the money to get something downtown, or if we should start a couple miles outside of downtown which is in the ghetto. I have been thinking that since the less expensive property is so far outside of the downtown area it may not see the same economic growth that we are seeing around downtown. Another thing is that the downtown property has two residential units upstairs, and two commercial units downstairs. The other property has one commercial unit downstairs and one big residential unit upstairs. The downtown property has a firm price of 320k which must be paid in cash (or loan), and the other property may not have as firm of a price, and maybe we could even have a lease to own or land contract agreement. Either way it went we would need some sort of financing, and we have no idea how we would get that. We don't have a lot of cash or collateral. I'm hoping that you guys might have some ideas / advice for us on what the next step would be. Thank you! - John