@Eric Crockett wow, that’s quite a story, thank you for sharing all that.I definitely think that if your price point is 250K you’d be looking more south toward RI than north toward Boston.I would be reluctant to recommend short term flips in this phase of the market if you’re still just starting out (even with your one success under your belt - congratulations btw :).If it were me in your position I’d continue with rental real estate, maybe with a slight value add component (i.e., needs a little work but not a ton).It wasn’t clear if you were asking if you should buy all cash or not, but with rates at new historic lows I’d use mortgage leverage for sure, though again taking the market phase into account, maybe not aggressively (e.g., 97% LTV) unless you’re overall financial picture can support it.I’d definitely say do traditional bank financing with low fixed rates if you can (again, this points to more long term holds than flips), instead of hard or high-rate private money.And as far as partners, the old saying is that a partnership is like a marriage - a lot easier to get into than get out of.

Here are a couple key components.1.

Those should be used for ANY demolition on older properties because hazardous particles exist in unexpected places.

Unexpected repairs that blew the budget?

Hey Justin, that's awesome that you've been working in the industry for several years already, understanding how to properly screen tenants/manage properties is a huge component of owning rentals.

And, how much one should have in savings for expenses like emergency repairs that wouldn’t be covered by insurance, vacancies or unexpected capital expenses that might come up before the cap ex fund is large enough to cover them.

At the least, the major components, roof, foundation, electrical, plumbing, HVAC will be inspected.

Some of my seasoned clients will waive it, beacause they can tolerate an unexpected repair and are okay with it, but 95% of the offers I write will have an inspection. 

Yes, I'd always rather pad my numbers with some breathing room and err on the higher side of estimates than be surprised by something unexpected.

This turned into a $3,000 charge that would take me about 2.5 months of cash flow to recover from (this is also why it’s important to have a healthy cash reserve to operate from and deal with unexpected issues!