Rough first year investing, is this normal???

[Alethea Sealy]

Hi all, its a pleasure to be here. My name is Alethea and I invest with my fiance. So he's French and I'm American we have very different views but agreed to invest in Detroit. We started in January this year with a few modest purchases (no bank financing) of multi-family dwellings.  Though they are in mixed income neighborhoods we do feel they are sound investments. But its been a challenge. My lack of real estate knowledge ( growing everyday), a scam contractor, lots of repairs that take longer than a few days to fix, late paying renters etc. We really haven't made a profit and we keep imputing cash into this project. Is this normal. I have cried at how long it takes to fix the houses with a little budget. My partner has fretted on the lack of results. We want to keep investing there even as we live outside the country but this is really a test. Is this normal? What has been your experience?