Where did you find this company and or was it referred to you.2. did you go with them because their fee's and interest rates were advertised as lower than other lenders.

Unless new companies move into town and create replacement jobs, all that will remain are lower-paying service sector jobs.

The only other option would be to get a coborrower to bring the down payment or get seller financing with a lower down payment. 

It would be a good idea to assess your tolerance to risk and then plan something like that, but using a heloc is going to be around 9-11% in this market so to pay something off with lower interest rate to borrow more might not make much sense.

Properties in flood zones are harder and more expensive to insure, which lowers their perceived value and makes them more difficult to sell.

So the owner is not stepping into any equity but instead his or her net worth is lower based on the fact that they had to pay closing costs on the transaction.  

In the second you have two tenants with 3600/mo rents and lower costs, if one moves you still have 50% revenue coming in diversified across two properties.

This lowered my cost basis per lot by 7k.

In my experience tenants on the lower end of rent tend to cause more damage than higher price tenants.

I'm also considering Halethorpe because it's a good commuter location.Some people really like supporting the city in which case , northeast Baltimore would seem to the best place to buy a single family, in my opinion given the taxes situation and given that none of those areas are walkable I’d rather just be in the county and pay Lower taxes, and it’s not like northeast Baltimore is much that much cheaper than Baltimore county, hathorpe is mixed, arbutus is nice, I hate the housing stock there, would rather be in Catonsville if I was considering western Baltimore county.