I lived VERY frugally, NEVER ate out, and still just couldn't manage to save anything because of my basic bills and it slowly got worse because I had some small moving costs to get to Philadelphia put on a card and i never could seem to pay them off because all I could afford was $50/mo to pay off the minimum.

As a client you can only have one realtor represent you, if you ate looking for deals talk to whomever you want to and be upfront, but again when an offer is made, only one realtor can represent you.

Well, anyhow it cleared the pipes alright and in the process, blew out the p-trap and down went all the food particles that had accumulated in the sink into the bottom of the cabinet, including the liquid de-clogger which ate up the finish on the inside of the cabinet doors. 

The kitchen ate some budget though.

Just last month I had a buyer and seller disagreeing on a subsidy for repairs...buyer was at 1800 and seller was at 1100...so $700 apart on like a $700k deal, so I ate half that and the buyers agent ate half to get the deal done.So many people hate real estate agents and the industry, and think they are useless...but let me tell you home sales would come to a grinding halt without them because buyers and sellers could never sit down and agree on a price. 90% of consumers take the transaction so personally, there is no way anything would ever sell.

There were thousands of listings for condos for rent, the cost to buy was high($400,000 for a 1 bed) and HOA fees ate up any remaining profit.  

Our locale just didn't work so other areas become necessarywe intended to 'self-manage' so it had to be withing driving range.we opted for a location where we had friends, as they had information we could use and perhaps get help with the property (ie team building)reapplying the first point, we started looking for 'good areas' in town.we excluded all class-c properties (research A,B,C property classes)as we were using a 1031 exchange, we were under some time pressure and elected to offer AS-IS.we ate a bit of 'deferred maintenance' but the cash flow has been great for ustoday (18yrs later) the property fmv(full market value) exceeds 2x our purchase price.While that process was ongoing, we read up on Fair Housing Regulation - - what we could and could not say/do regarding the application process and managing tenants.We looked at/downloaded many lease agreements to see and learn how others were protecting their interests.Lastly, we found tools for screening tenants, verifying employment and income, and how to perform background, credit checks.So - - that was our learning curve. 

I've opened up a Solo Roth 401k at E*Trade Financial and now that I'm showing income from my Rental Property business, I'll be able to contribute all $20,000 per year from Net Rental Income plus another $20,000 from Uber/Lyft rideshare business for a total of $40,000/year, each year over the next ten years. 

For the second, we bought it with a conventional loan and had to replace the HVAC this past year which ate into a lot of the cash flow..

High maintenance, high turnovers really ate into cash flow.