Your plan appears to fit your situation very well and executed properly has the potential to reap large rewards.

Question I would ask myself is how much did I pay for this and what is the risk vs reward.

As said before, owing a VHR property that can be arctic at times presents different challenges, but can be rewarding. 

Yes, there are some great buys in that area, but to me, the risk/reward ratio is too high.Start driving south from Joppa Rd on Harford Rd and to me, the whole tenor of the neighborhoods change at around Moravia Rd. and certainly by the time you get to Argonne Dr. 

@Roland Brown there are many strategies to making money in REI, but "sweat equity" has high rewards in an good market. 

The current first is for $102,000 but they do not want to give the borrowers more money to payout the property taxes or fix the roof- that's why have are looking for someone else.I agree that the risk likely outweighs the reward. 

I hope this helps and I hope you find it rewarding as you continue down this path.

You may even find that it is SO rewarding that you might never leave this niche. 

It does sound like the 1031 exchange would be worth my time- especially since it's a $750 risk for potentially $10k reward.

I have capital deployed in very rewarding places that I'm not comfortable liquidating for the down payment yet, however i do have roughly 20k+ in my 401k through my workplace Fidelity account that i would gladly put towards real estate..