I didn't bet the house money however, I could have bought a nice pair of snakeskin shoes.

Taxes are about $3000 for the pair, and insurance will likely be about the same.  

A few years ago I did a pair of mortgages for a pair of houses right next door at the same time, both being purchased from the same seller (1031 exchanging them into a strip mall in the midwest, gotta love Bay Area home values).

$5-10K is a good bit of savings but if you're looking to go straight into storage (which I wish I had done rather than messing with Residential RE first), You'll need to pair that money with some "sweat equity" and also find someone who is willing to look past your past financial indiscretions. 

If you have that many options why not pair it down a little further and be more precise?

toni, i bought a pair of duplexes in my neck of the woods with the intentions on flipping about 5 months ago.

Also, the inspection will provide you all the "little items" as I call them, that will likely come up on the end buyers inspection report and having that in front of you allows you to have your crew repair or add all of those items so the final buyers inspection comes back very clean and leaves little for them to use as negotiating tools.Also, having a second trained pair of eyes on your investment, while in escrow, but BEFORE you purchase, is well worth the small fee!

They are in what I would call an average blue coller area.Not great but not terrible neighborhood.Numbers:-Purchase price is 130k on the pair (no money down at this time)-Taxes are $3600 yr-Insurance is $3400 yr (can this be right?)

"Just Do It" might be good advice if you want to buy a pair of shoes.

They were talking about somebody buying a pair of used 5 year old Mercedes and having 40K (Yep thats right) of unknown loans on THEIR cars.