For the last 22 years I've been involved in real estate as a house flipper, with extensive experience in building and renovation contracting, owned a residential property management company, and now have a private money lending business (licensed NC re broker).

But as to best use of your money - leverage gives you 4 to  5 times the volume of properties that you control with the same amount of money invested.  

I could have put three B class doubles in front of you with good numbers before you finished reading this... time is money!

Make a little money on the price and a little on the interest rate.

Most of the time, unless you bought many years ago or got some other crazy deal, primary homes don't make good rentals because you paid too much for them to ever really make any money.

And at the end of the day, paying taxes means you made money, so that's awesome! 

You can go after them in court, but you may not see that money.

,We wanted to split the water meter, but we didn't have the time nor the money to do it. 

The investment will be 12.5% cash on cash and an overall return on the money invested will be 48% over 2 years.

its kind of a trade off because i can get a newer property at a higher price and down payment, or get something older, less down and then use that money to fix what i need to fix.