If the property can still produce free cash-flow, or at lease carry itself, under your rainy day scenario, then you know the price to offer.

This will do a good job of giving you hands-on training in terms of dealing with tenants, maintenance issues, and the overall pain/pleasure of owning income-producing real estate.

I am looking at buying my first rental property and wondering what strategy makes the most sense, I have some cash can buy one house that might not be in an area where the value will go up anytime soon but has slot of renters and the house would need little work if any before its ready to rent, option 2 would buy maybe 2 in that area but they need work so can use a credit card to cover the repairs and help build my credit ( I have a good score just not a real long history which the bank dont seem to like) option 3 would be take the cash I have to cover 20% or higher of a down payment on a house in a better area where rent is 300 higher on average my goal is to buy and hold and rent maybe down the road get into buying and selling thanks for any opinions

@Sonit Bhatt As you can see just from the responses you've gotten so far, there are plenty of markets around the country that produce solid returns.

There'd be value in you producing leads that have expressed an interest in selling.If you get any in Atlanta, let me know, I'd take a whack at some to see how they pan out...

My main goal was to use it for my own personal investing, however it is now evolving into becoming a top producer as well...I really want to be involved in Real Estate in all aspects of my work...so ultimately would like to transition into full time...I guess I have found my passion :-)

We owned a sheep & cattle station that was not producing any worthwhile income.

I guess I just need to find out the right direction to take those steps at this point in time.I would love to build a portfolio of cash flowing properties, but at the same time I understand the power of being able to leverage debt and build equity even if the property isn't producing a real strong cash flow at this moment..

I've been researching how to change the coin slot because I'm going to be raising it to $1.50 soon.

You can raise private money to cover all of the cash needs of a deal, so as long as you know how to manage contractors to produce results, and manage a management company over time to keep the property full, there is no reason not to go directly into multi-family.