Spend the extra coin and get higher class neighborhoods, skip the rough areas.

I am not making it a bedroom, just an extra room for an office or whatever the renter uses it for. 

I am not against realtors earning their pay.

You will get the full 12% if you hold the property for a full year otherwise you will only earn interest on the number of days you have held the tax certificate / deed.Please correct me on this if I am wrong.

Then I didn't know if it was appropriate to charge $1 for 10 years or if asking for like $250/yr per acre was reasonable.Anyway, it seems extra challenging BECAUSE there's no real money in it and because its pretty flippant.

I found one on the local craigslist that I could afford, and I'm thinking about buying it with the intention of renting it out, and using the profits from that to offset my own living situation (kinda like a duplex house hack but with 2 separate houses), or worse case scenario I could just live there and the lot rent plus utilities would be less than what I'm currently paying, and I could have roommates for extra income.

Or rent out an extra bedroom in your personal home for a little bit to get cash.

@Jermaine Riggs   Remember the 6PsPrior Planning Prevents P*ssPoor Performance There are steps that you can be taking today that will better ensure you will be able to qualify for the best of terms on your purchase in TX.1. have a Mortgage Broker run a Tri-Merged MORTGAGE credit report and pay the extra $15 for them to also run the "What If" score increase simulator to know how best to pay down debt in the interim2. start eating MREs and saving like a maniac until you close as the more money you can show in reserves Post-Closing, the better the programs you can qualify for.etc,etc,etc,   

In your case, you should be able to because I am sure you dont have a separate bill under a partnership name or partnership is not earning interest in its own bank account and so forth.But your argument loses some strength where it is clear that the investors have jointly negotiated the terms of the transactions and would be unable to separately use their interests in the property without significant cooperation and joint efforts among the co-owners.

Paying cash may help investors sleep better at night (ignorance being bliss) but losing all that money every month is certainly not wise investing.A wise investor maximises leverage to generate highest returns on cash and holds a reserve in other vehicles to be used for the same security as dead equity while still earning maximum returns.