This may be a long post, but I thought it would be good to walk through everything step-by-step, and explain my thinking along the way.If you want to stick with me through it all, here we go:I was not going to be getting a conventional mortgage for my first property for a number of reasons.First, I am still annoyed at the hoops I had to jump through to get a mortgage for my primary residence.Second, my liquid cash was on the lower end.Third, the properties that I would need to start out with would not be financeable anyway.Fourth, my DTI is on the high side, due to the decision that we made to take out a HELOC to complete interior improvements on my primary house.So, I decided that my path was going to be to form a single member LLC, and take a loan from my 401(k) at work to finance the down payment.Since I do not view the 401(k) loan as a long-term solution, I am treating like hard money, and pay it off ASAP.So, my first deal would be a flip, or a rental that was such a good deal, that I could re-fi out and pull all my cash out.I decided to reach out to the commercial lending department of the local credit union, which I am a member.The person I talked to (who became my lender) is fantastic.I told him what types of properties I was looking for, and that I’d look to turn them into rentals, or to flip them.I will never forget his response, which reminded me why I love this credit union.He said:“Typically, the deals you are talking about are much smaller than the deals we like to do.However, we also realize that you can not get to that level unless someone helps you get there.So, if the numbers make sense, we will see if any of our products fit.”Awesome!

We reach out at multiple times throughout the redemption period, all the way to the end.Part of me is beginning to think that foreclosure is such a touchy subject to many people, that many would rather just ignore taking any action, and just let the property go, even though our "cash for keys" and offers to list their properties give them a chance to make something good out of a bad situation.Conversely,  somewhat seasoned marketer in me wants to stay the course, and keep altering our message until we improve our response rates; after-all, people have been successfully marketing to people in foreclosure and pre-foreclosure for years, which makes me think there is hope to ramp-up response rates.Sorry for all the text, I'm thinking out loud a bit here.Has anyone had any success marketing to mortgagors during the redemption period?  

My objective is to move the building in the other direction with improvements and rent increases to get higher quality tenants.    

3 BR/1 bath asking $170k.Taxes are $9,062 (although I saw at least one other figure on a different website, I went with the highest)Here are my assumptions:closing costs - $4,000rehab/initial improvements - $5,000 (this is a blind guess because there are no pictures of the inside available, but let's not focus on this number right now...)Rent - $2,000vacancy - 8% ($160/month)property management - 8% (the calculator I used (downloaded from BP) uses net rental income for this, so it's about $147.16/month)maintenance - $1,000/yearcapex - $160/monthinsurance - $1,000/yearwith a 25% down payment and 4.5% thirty year financing for the balance, I net a whopping -.82%.  

You need you buy and renovate, maybe turn a SFR in to a duplex, something, which will improve the living density.

@David White continue to learn, grow, and improve!

Since the owner is rehabbing three of the four units, it should improve the worth of the property. 

check your nearest big box home improvement store and ask if there are available scratch and dent units, negotiate accordingly.

Smelly (and smelly hoarder) houses are great to improve!  

Of course, being near Nashville is great for people who love a city with a unique identity, innovation and entrepreneurship, culture, music, food, art, nature, etc, etc.It's more challenging to find good deals in the city now, as it has been a really hot market, but there are still deals to be found a little farther out.Congrats on taking bold steps to improve your life!