If you are telling us that you have done serious analytical investing, crunching numbers, digging into financial statements and valuing companies with sound principles and then (the hard part) trading with discipline; then you are one of the most competent and disciplined 19 year old I ever did see and you should probably write a book about yourself.

Well, after crunching the numbers on a bunch of places I feel that I am better prepared to enter the game now, with more realistic expectations. 

I am looking at buying my first property, and was just crunching some numbers for a high level estimate, and I see that i actually have a higher ROI if I buy with a mortgage and 20% downpayment than if i buy the property outright.

@Scott Weaner is right -- gather all your data and crunch it through the calculator.  

I crunch the numbers on an ideal property and yes, closing cost is making the ideal purchase difficult.

I am just crunching numbers right now and things do not seem to work out.

I will get back to crunching numbers and account for potential appreciation, depreciation, and tax deductions.  

In the meantime I'll be crunching numbers, looking at the analysis tools and possibly rethinking my strategy.The other thing is, again I do already have my first condo and I own it in full, maybe there's a way to include this in my strategy as far as cash out refi on it or selling it.

I ran the numbers myself on that duplex and the cash flow looks negative to me (just like all the other duplexes in Ferndale right now).I strongly suggest you create a spreadsheet so that you can crunch numbers quickly as you peruse through properties.

Also, there were tennants renting one floor who are not on a lease but tennants at will - one of the stipulations also was that these tennants could stay at the rent they are paying (at will) otherwise if we wanted it vacant - they would need to be given a months notice and hence deal would not close by end of Feb.Well we went to see the house and really liked it - we figured that tennants could stay as is until deal closed and then we could revisit the issue.Asking price - 399KWe were told sellers bank had agreed to a 380K short sale - nothing less.We found out that the home had been under contract twice before but fell through - the realtor said it was due to financing issues.We crunched the no's and figured 380K was fair - not a sweet deal but fair and from comps it looked like FMV in this market was approx 380K.We put the offer in subject to inspection & financing.Offer was accepted.We had the inspection and all was pretty much as we expected.We had already been pre-qualified for a loan so we felt confident all would move quickly.Anyway we received the signed purchase offer but it wasn't in the name of the actual owner it was in the name of an investor.And from what we could gather, this investor had taken it off the hands of the distressed home owner and had worked out a short sale with the bank.We had our attorney take a look at the draft of the P&S the seller's attorney sent over and we realize this investor has just recently acquired this house from the homeowner who was obviously in distress and apparently our bank doesn't approve such transactions ie. a seller who has not held title for minimum 60 - 90 days unless we put a substantial amount of money down.My feeling is the seller's agent should have been more clear about this - that it wasn't a typical transaction and since financing had fell through before, i feel they should have asked us who were using and probably gave us an idea whether such a lender would approve it.We can try now to look for a lender who can push a deal like this through and close by end of February.I also feel this investor who has worked out the short sale has worked it out much less than 380K and is basically making a few $$ himself, why else would he be involved.