@Frank ChinBased on the opportunity value of cash your equity, if your mortgage free, is most likely creating negative cash flow from your investment property.With the opportunity value of cash at a minimum of 10% for every 100K in equity you must deduct $833/month from your rental income to insure a accurate accounting of your TRUE income.Investors must keep in mind every property has two separate income generating streams.

If you can, I'd try to purchase all cash so you can maximize the benefits of refinancing once your property is rented and generating income.

And I'm buying another commercial property that will generate me about $3500/month cash flow NNN.My GA rental definitely outperformed my OH ones, at least in the past 4 years.I love N GA so far - lower property tax, more population economic growth.

What do you guys use for book keeping, to categorize transactions and generate Profit and Loss reports for your CPA? 

This property will lay the groundwork for all of your future investments, just think about how much income this home will generate over the next 20-30 years! 

We are now looking to see if Airbnb arbitrage may be something we can start to help us generate the cashflow we need.

I am considering paying off the mortgage lump sum, which would avoid around $135K in interest payments and generate an additional $1,400 positive cash flow ($28.8K annually).

And it's worked for generations and the wealthy for a very long time because mutual insurance companies understand the human lifecycle quite well (law of large numbers), they're well regulated, make safe and sound investments and in several cases have paid out dividends consecutively for over 150 years (Mass Mutual, Lafayette Life, etc).

For me, my properties at purchase time generated some cash flow, but with the depreciation, it generated small loses on my tax returns. 

What is the property generating a year (NOI).