Your best place to invest is where there is equity - in the hood or nicer neighborhoods; it's all about how much equity you can negotiate for.Equity as you know is like cash and a quick way to build your real estate fortune. 

Fortunately, I bought mine as a short sale and HOA covers exterior maintenance, water, sewage, and garbage. 

Fortunately, the house has updated wiring and breaker box.

I'm in the fortunate position to have more of both than many, but I'm not willing overindulge in either.  

I want to disclose this information to all that are interested and willing in talking and those that I have the good fortune of meeting in person.

I was fortunate to get introduced to the podcasts early on which I tribute to some of my prior knowledge and I feel like I have a grasp of what I'd like to do, but all of you seasoned investors I'm sure know exactly what not to do, and what's ok to push the limits with. 

I went to a 3 day "guru" up-sell with fortune builders about 2 months ago.

I am sure there are good ones out there as @Jay Hinrichs says, but I just had the poor fortune to run across some very fly-by-night slick talking salespeople that really turned me off from the whole model. 

On my personal residence it seems like I pay a small fortune in property taxes but it all evens out to a certain degree.

I've been studying for months and looking for deals "fortunately" I'm a first time home buyer and I've been preapproved for an FHA loan for the maximum (271k) in Hillsborough County (Tampa) FL.One of my strategies is to use the first time option in Homepath, HUD, and Homestep to get ahead of investors and get a better chance to get the property, the challenge is that my agent tells me this offers usually go to investors because they buy cash and these agencies prefer cash investors over FHA or FHA 203k.How a person in my situation get in the game when competing with investors with more financial capacity.