Inspections may cost more upfront, but they can save you from significant headaches and unexpected expenses down the road.Negotiate Hard: Use inspection findings as leverage.If the HVAC is near the end of its life, negotiate a credit for its replacement.If the cast iron plumbing is deteriorating and needs replacement, ask for a credit as well.Sellers often prefer negotiating credits over doing the work themselves.To give you an example: I was once under contract for an old house priced at $170,000.

Luckily we are very close so we are very open to creatives approaches to maximizing this.

This venture was originally expected to have a 10 year horizon, with the goal to maximize IRR in that period. 

Tenant moved to a smaller space down the road to save money. 

Start SavingOnce you land a job, build up your savings for your first deal.

My wife and I both have decent paying jobs, but after paying rent, vehicles, student loans, etc, there’s not much left over for saving, let alone 20% down.

Graduating college, not wanting to pay rent, saving a pile of cash, thinking about hacking.   

Black Friday is coming up and you can probably save more.

I would leave yourself a lot of cushion regarding savings.

A bit pricey up front, but we are long term buy and hold investors, so the savings on paying for tenant heat makes sense.In the 6-unit our initial thought was to install electric heat in the units, but that can be a hard sell in Maine even though I am not convinced that electric heat is necessarily more expensive than other options (we even did a comparison last winter in our 2-unit where one is on a propane boiler w/ HWBB and the other electric, and it was about the same cost per month).