I grew up around a “grind” mentality, and my family members seemed to spend all the money they made.

Investing in area you're less familiar with combined with multiday travel can be more costly than spending more in your own market.

Spending on expensive upgrades is not the answer to improve your tenant base in this type of area.Keep the homes habitable, clean, and safe. 

Or, ya know, just spend the next 140 hours trying to get a self-study law education followed by another few hundred hours self-study to sort out how to avoid repeating the situation.That's the reality of it all. 

Spend a little more money than you might have been planning to, buy in a better area (i.e. not a “turn key” 100k house off the mls), and self manage.

Because for a certain type renter it’s just SO easy to continue renting fully furnished rather than having to spend $20-40k on furniture; come up with a down payment on a house purchase; and or worry about repairs and maintenance.  

thanks for your time and help rent to retirement works directly with build to rent developers like us around the country once they are framed up. you are buying properties pretty much at market value but with a hand holding. you can work directly with a builder or directly with them. they are just an intermediary. they take 5% on what we make as a builder but have a large list of investors and a systemized approach to selling new builds. if you want to get a better deal I'd recommend directly contacting builders and building it yourself. fly to the market. spend 2 days, tour new builds, get a feeling for how it's going. if your builder isn't building multiple at a time then I wouldn't recommend working with them. rent to retirement is a well oiled and well run machine. they've had their ups and downs with dozens of transactions in florida but modified their process. they are well known and established and transparent. if you have a more specific market and feel confident in your ability to vet deals try it out. happy to talk more my info is in my signature. we work directly with them to sell new builds and no organization is perfect but I have good things to say about them as a builder and potential build to rent developer that sells build to rent triplexes and single family homes through them to end buyers in California like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego 

Or you can look at transactional funding, but you'd likely spend more on marketing as the need for double closings are less than fix and flip deals.Again, all the best to you on your journey!

Maybe he's already charging above-market rates and needs to adjust expectations.I don't see the justification for spending $12,000 to install electric baseboard in four apartments.

I wouldn’t buy a house to live in right away, as I need to spend the first 12 months studying the area.