I did some lending on prosper back in the 2006-2008 era (wonderful timing, but it did keep me out of equities so not all a bad thing), and while my expectations were for maybe middle to high single digits annual return, I ended up with about a zero percent return, due to the wave of defaults that hit in 2008, which was probably around my worst case scenario.

Better a little piece of something than 100 percent of nothing.Best of luck to you!

A great book on this topic is the "The 16 percent solution" by Joel moskowitz

Anything less then that and your in a bad neighborhood or got the deal of a lifetime.

Although I'm not in Texas, my understanding is that the state portion of sales/service tax is 6.25% and then some municipalities slap another percent or two on top of that.

There are 100 percent loans for owner occupied homes.

I have a contact in Indy that does 'micro notes' if you are interested in pursuing a cash on cash return of up to 10 or 12 percent I can get you in touch with him.  

I copied and pasted this from Naples Daily News:Home builder stocks rose early Tuesday after the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller survey found that U.S. home prices rose 10.9 percent in March, the most since April 2006.

Even as demand for rentals rises amid a falling home ownership rate, yields are declining and companies formed to buy the homes that have gone public haven’t yet been profitable.Funds are buying property now, including homes sold by Carrington, for rents that yield 6 percent to 8 percent a year, before costs such as insurance, taxes and vacancies, according to Rose.

When considering rental property, as a rule of thumb, I always deduct 40 percent from the potential gross rental income - 20 percent for maintenance and repairs and 20 percent for vacancies.