Nothing will ever even break even only putting down 3.5 % with 8% interest rates.

@Randy Duncan there is something to keep in mind when you are a landlord: no matter what a lease says, a section 8 contract, a blood oath or whatever, the landlord ALWAYS has ultimate responsibility.You can refer back to your lease and contract all you would like but if something breaks and a tenant doesn’t pay for it you will be stuck with the bill.

Hello, im new on bigger pockets and interested in using the house hacking strategy to break into real estate investing.

In comparison, we moved out of our first Colorado Springs home in November 23' and we are just barely breaking even as a LTR. 

Lived here almost a year now and breaking even.

And as a person who is very familiar with cancer I know that it's not a situation that involves breaking all commitments within 2 weeks so I do have my reasons to be skeptical. 

are there any other types of maintenance / things that break more easily due to snow?

It takes a lot of money to operate a rental as things break and wear out, tenant issues, unexpected crap that comes out of nowhere… in my experience it takes $300-500/month minimum in capex budget alone and a lot of people only budget $100 or less because they’re using a spreadsheet that recommends a percentage of 5-10% of rent and the rent is too low for that number to be high enough. 

Wouldn't really keep an asset like that unless its at least breaking even at GROSS rent. 

I'd build on an infill lot closer to downtown. you can get land within the downtown markets and construct multifamily properties through the same process and higher units and better floorplans. we just passed our first triplex in central ohio and are breaking ground in 3 weeks.