Advice on buying my first rental property

[Madisyn C.]

Hi all, I've been a silent reader here for a little while. A little background- 7 years ago when I was 18 my boyfriend and I got our first apartment in the neighborhood he grew up in. Our landlord had watched him grow up (no relation, just lived nextdoor) and decided to take a chance on renting to two young kids. We were never late on rent, always responsible, etc. and she took a strong liking to me. Fast forward a few years later, she had to move her sick husband to a nursing home in north fl and decided to stay close to him. She had enough trust in me to watch over, maintain and collect rent for her other properties down here. She has also entrusted me with handling her finances, bills, taxes, etc.

She sees that I have an interest real estate and is more than willing to co-sign and put a deposit down on a house to rent out. I think she's excited to show someone who is interested how she use to make her money and wants to see that we're set later on. She's also said she's not interested in making any interest off of it, just pay her back what she'll put down.

We have been looking at properties in the Port Richey area in the 40k-50k range with a 5k deposit. I have some experience now working for her, seeing how tenants can be and the maintenance with rentals, but overall, I think we've been lucky and I haven't had any bad experiences. Now that I will be doing this on my own, with not much savings for disasters, the pessimist in me is thinking of all the things that could go wrong. My boyfriend and I work hard with fulltime jobs but are making just enough to pay the bills. I realize that there are some risks, but should we dive in and do this? I feel like its a good opportunity to get started and I just wanted to hear some advice on this particular situation. Is this an opportunity I should take advantage of, even though my personal finances are not ideal at the moment?