South Carolina Taxes on Non owner occupied rentals

[David Bailey]

I am new to the BP website and real estate investment community in general. I live in South Carolina, own my first home (3 years into a 30 yr mortgage), full time firefighter, debt free (except for mortgage), and have a Dave Ramsey approved emergency savings and reg contributions to a Roth IRA. I have spent every free moment over the past few months studying real estate investment, primarily rentals, and fear that I am entering the paralysis by analysis stage. Today I spent time using the BRRR calculator to analyze a few properties and even with locations in not so great areas where I "estimated" bottom dollar expenses and great deals, the 6% tax that will hit with the second (and third, forth, etc) property seems to kill the estimated cash flow. I should mention I am using the low and no money down creative financing approach, and I still seem to hit a negative or WAY below 12% return. I truly want to take action, but this has me dumbfounded on how to create a positive cash flow in the SC area. I am not opposed to long distance investing, but I'm trying to follow the recommendations of all the BP books and articles of starting in my area (born and raised here as well) because of my local knowledge of the area. Does anyone have any advice on getting started in this area (Charleston)? Or am I stuck with saving on my lucrative government salary (sarcasm) a 20-30% down payment in order to create a buffer for positive cash flow upon renting? I am not opposed to other real estate investment vehicles, I have just mainly studied rentals as I appreciate the long term benefits of this strategy. I understand saving for a goal, just concerned that the time it will take and inaction during the saving process will contribute to cold feet. I want to take action!! Thank you in advance for any guidance, and sorry if I just dropped WAY too much info too quickly.