THe house has been vacant since either June or September and the previous owner bought it to rehab it but he got deployed.

The U.S. will raise the benchmark interest rate.†~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama will focus more on helping consumers, local governments and businesses than banks as his administration deploys the second half of the $700 billion rescue fund, said Lawrence Summers, the president- elect’s top economic adviser. “The focus isn’t going to be on the needs of banks; it’s going to be on the needs of the economy for credit,†Summers said on CBS’s “Face the Nation†program.

Have you considered treating your RE business the way you'd treat one of your system deployments?

If you use $190k fully deployed all year and 100% success rate perhaps you yield 10% prior to expenses. 

Study them and decide on the one you will be putting all your efforts on.Lastly go ahead and look at the different options you have to start getting involved: Go and work for an established local (or not) that does what you want to do, become a member of an investor club where you can potentially partner up with experienced investors (you need to bring value), start deploying some capital into some passive opportunities to start learning the process, start buying some properties with your own capital and grow from there....I hope this is somewhat helpful.

Not saying this is how we all will feel when we decide to do our first deal, but the idea of being so prepared that when it comes time for action, you're 100% ready, I think is a great takeaway.I'm of the opinion that you should start saving cash while reading everything you can on REI so that when you do have the capital, you're very clear on how you want to deploy it.

Once you are deployed, you will be at the mercy of how well your PM does for you.  

Shoot for 6 props or more , which in Birmingham means having about $150k in capital to deploy for dp's (6 * $25k dp each, average price for solid B/B+ cash flow props is about $100k) plus some for reserves, of course.

After fees of 6% (or $21k) and paying off the mortgage of $230k, you are left with $99k.Now you could re-deploy this $99k into a new investment.

That can be a great time to take money off the table and pay down others, or re-deploy elsewhere.