@Samuel Kim - please contact @Chris K. privately and allow him to show you how you can benefit from this wonderful strategy that he implemented for his many health professional clients.

If you buy real estate, you will spend hours and days and weeks and months of your life dealing with it… Home repairs, guests,… An investment really has to be pretty amazing to sacrifice all that time for itThe houses I own I bought many years ago at dirt cheap prices and dirt cheap mortgage rates.

Hey Zachary, I've lived in Alabama my whole life and my whole family has been in real estate.

However, her life changed and she only stayed for the first year.

On buy-and holds we usually replace all the plumbing with pex, no matter what, because galvanized has a life expectation of about 60 years, so I usually take the sooner than later approach.Stick with hard money, like Mach1 or or MKE hard money (Scott Lurie) as they will not leand on a deal that does not pencil out, so you have the added benefit of someone experienced looking over your numbers.

With current interest rates, and they are at least 1% higher with potentially additional points for non owner occupied property, it is hard to find properties that will allow for positive cash flow after paying the mortgage, if you are looking for money for the down payment from a private lender, those are normally at higher than market and I am not sure it would be possible to pay it off.... please remember you need to take into account that you may not have a tenant for a certain amount of time, a tenant may stop paying rent, or you will have a big ticket item to fix, so I would wait if I were you and save to have enough for the down payment and closing costs and perhaps some money set aside for repairs. you also want to make sure that you have your own emergency fund outside of the money needed for the investment property because life happens ....

Hey @Mordechai Chaimovitz - It sounds like you are talking about Chicago's NW side because there are definitely tons of areas in Chicago where a 2 flat can cashflow well.I know for me buying on the nw side was critical to my personal well-being and life happiness. 

The Shoals is a great place to settle down and take life slow.

Multifamily mindset has recruited students from all walks of life such as teachers, medical doctors, veterans, real estate agents, business men, and I was included into a group (multifamily mindset encourages students to form groups) and one of them is a veteran who is divorced, has kids to support, not employed during that time, got a loan of $40,000 for the tuition.

Life and business are complicated.