Financing Ideas for Rental properties

[Josh Ewin]

Hi All,

Nice looking forum, I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot here. I'm learning as much as I can about rental properties and will be picking up my first property in the next 3 months. That being said, I do not plan for that property to be my last.

I'm putting pencil to paper and figuring out the best way to leverage my investment capital for the properties. In running my numbers, I need to figure out the down payment required for an investment property. I've heard 20% as a minimum is a good rule of thumb. Can anyone verify this? Also, is there a better way to leverage my investment dollars? At 20%, I'll be lucky to have a 2 year ROI on that money.