I could barely spend the 1 hour open house time we did for them.The buyer @ $144,500 was a divorced, retired 65 yr old GM worker with a 2 pack a day habit.

It wasn't in that bad of shape when we bought it, but it did need a lot of tlc, the former owners lost it in foreclosure and it looked as if they had been just doing the bare minimum in upkeep for a while.

I would escrow taxes and ins. which make the monthly payment about $730.Gross rents are 1580Property manager - $158 (10%)With half vacancy rents are only $790, which would barely cover the mortgage.Im I looking at this wrong???

That $35K home is barely above junk, so the $60K MH that would hold up is almost never on the market.

Is he taking the cash-out from his rental to pay down the primary residence so that he could barely qualify for an FHA refinance?

Strangely enough, I love my job and it pays the bills (barely) but I've come to realize that it's not going to make me wealthy.So I'm looking to learn a lot (more) from this site to discover what my niche might be in REI (wholesaling, rehab/flipping, buy & hold, etc) with my current limited resources.

But logically, who would want to compromise their own credit with this practice, especially if you're barely getting by.

It sure is nice to start that cash flow on day 0.However, the negative to this is that I personally did not do or oversee the work--and it's always been (in my experience so far) barely average to subpar once you start to scratch below the surface.

I'm troubled further because in my area (so cal) 150k can barely buy you a 2 bed 2 bath at 1000sf.

If you would be staining it you would have to go with something less strong because the stripper can color the bare wood underneath and put some heavy dark spots in it.