The didn't live within their means, accrued a lot of debt, and it eventually resulted in them not paying rent and being evicted.Consolidating debt reduces their payments so they have more money available, but it doesn't automatically teach them to live within their means.

As lenders, well issue a prequal/preapproval letter if we've analyzed your income, assets (bank and brokerage statements to establish that you have the liquidity to afford the down payment, closing costs, and reserves), review credit of the guarantors, review the relevant experience to ensure that we're not throwing our money away on newbies that are wandering around in the dark, and have put together a reasonable plan of attack for the project.

so i had zero debt or interest payments on it while it was being fixed up. 

I'm stressing because I wasn't anticipating this and am not excited about the prospect of paying 2k more than I was expecting when my mortgage payments kick in next month.I'll be searching the forum for answers as well, but since I am kinda desperate at the moment, I thought I would go straight to the source for advice.

That way we could start renting without needing a new down payment and all of the closing costs.

I have this theory that basically the stock market can grow faster than the fundamentals more so than housing, reason being when people put money into their 401k or whatever they are just throwing money in, not looking at p/e or whatever, the stock market is in part just an index of Americans excess savings plus it’s a unstated policy of the government that stocks go up, where as housing people are obviously very very aware of how much thier monthly payments is/ how much rent is, plus it seems that is actually a push to lower housing prices at least relative to inflation.

Hence a win win, I'm thinking, finance, we can make the payment with $10K down, $400 mthly with dealer financing.

It may be time to shop around for a new one who will actually add value to your investment.If you want a recommendation for a reliable property manager in the Lehigh Valley, I’d be happy to share some contacts.

Building a reliable network of contractors is one of my main goals for this year to help me scale up moving forward.

Either1) your startup takes off and you can distribute profit fast enough to pay off your debts, or2) you find another source of $100,000 a year (which barely even starts to pay down the $300k, but might provide a better chance for a better loan), or3) you BK and possibly lose the rental houses to creditors (hopefully not, but we don’t know how they are held), or 4) you sell the houses, take the tax hit, work with the IRS on a payment plan whose interest will be much lower than your CCs, and focus on the startup.