For this area, there are some with moderate condo fees ($50-$200/month) that cover garbage, water, landscaping, pool/tennis courts (if there is one).

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Sorry for the shameless bump, but I will be moderating a panel at the crowdfunding conference in Austin this week and additional commentary on this from our new site members would be useful.

In the heartland, rent yields are so high on the types of properties that Matt describes that you can easily structure the buyer's LC payment to be quite a bit less than the rent would be, even with a sales price that is 50-100% more than you just recently spent to acquire the property, with a rate of 9-10%, and with a fully amortizing 10-15 year note.Most folks that do this that I'm aware of do little or no work to the property beyond very basic habitability standard, they are sold as moderate fixer-uppers to folks that have the skills or connections to make the necessary repairs and updates.

I assume the appraisal is only based on the "official" home.I would be at least moderately concerned that you have space being leased out for habitation purposes that is not on the city and tax assesssor's radar.

I based the rent amount on what the rent would be for a low to moderate 1-bedroom apartment.

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So this works best with a moderate rehab, enough to justify the forced appreciation on an appraisal, but not so much to force you to come out of pocket with a lot of the rehab.

I can't even imagine how James, @Joshua Dorkin , and the other moderators "follow"/monitor the activity/posting of the colleagues they like to most closely follow - with thousands of colleagues.

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