A lot restriction is cooking in the Congress to plug the loopholes right now. 

Steve cook may be a good role model for investing in proper is without borrowing.  

Listen to as many podcast as you can (if you have not been doing that already), in  your car, while you cook etc. 

He/she will be glad to do so if the books aren't cooked. 

Not sure how well that would work with every tenant but I did that with a vegetable garden with my current tenant and it worked out.

I cut the grass and keep the vegetation down to keep neighborhood kids from doing what kids do in those kinds of area and eventually would like to try to acquire it.

Illinois, where one in every 1,926 housing units had a foreclosure filing, had the highest August foreclosure rate among all states, followed by Delaware (one in every 2,387), South Carolina (one in 2,417), New Jersey (one in 2,441) and Florida (one in 2,950).On a localized level, Cook County, Illinois (Chicago area) had the most August foreclosure starts with 798, followed by Los Angeles County, California, with 740; Harris County, Texas (Houston area), with 465; Suffolk County, New York (eastern Long Island), with 297; and Riverside County, California, with 280."

Ceramic top cook tops or ranges may look nice, but they are not tenant friendly or easy/cheap to fix when the top is cracked.

It's like learning to cook, cook what?

Since it looks like you are in cook county have you ever checked out the judicial auction there?