If it could "easily" rent for $800 & $1200 why isn't it producing that income now?

My plan started from a simple concept I found in reading rich dad, poor dad.....Buy income producing assets and have your assets pay your liabilities. 

Give Ben Leybovich's blog post here a read, but even more so, read Brian Burkes comments on the blog.Your CAPEx reserve is not an operating expense, it is a reserve and is deducted from NOI.Instead of looking for a specific CAP rate which will get you in trouble, you should be carrying out a discounted cash flow analysis over your {initial} hold period and determine the IRR or MIRR ... use these to anchor your underwriting, then look at things like Cash-on-Cash return to help determine the composition (some might say, quality) of the return.Frank Gallnelli's "What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow" is a good primer to get you started.  

Sounds risky, but also like it may produce greater returns.Money is tight and I really want my first direct mailings to yield the most leads.

@Mike KelleyI am planning on taking the same steps if the home has trouble selling in 60-90 days and it is possible I will make more money if I used this procedure initially.

The man does good work and gives you realistic completion times.In oil producing regions of the US, especially Houston, a drop in the price of crude threatens job losses and falling home prices.

We have been in a drought for so long that some dudes were able to dump some troubled properties without anyone knowing they were water drainage nightmares.

So I'm really uncertain on this one.As my father always said, there's no use borrowing trouble because the interest rate is crippling.  

Each of the dashboard boxes should produce an action when you click on them - for example, if you want to "read the UBG" it should direct you to www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investingThat said, we just launched this today, if you see any bugs, please take screenshots and let me know!

I have studied flip books and repair costs etc, so I think my repair estimates are fairly close, but I'm having trouble getting a deal accepted.