Once you are licensed you could easily work in RE and go to school and make it work (especially if you are active and smart enough to not be paying rent like you are)!

As a result, I'm able to easily identify the areas that are good for investors in our region, as well as properties that are undervalued.  

I'm thinking if other investors are scared off just because of the foundations composition and age, I might be able to get a really good deal if it is still in good working shape and can be easily maintained for the next 10-20 years.  

I'm planning 20% down, and the payment on the building is easily manageable with my salary even if all 9 units where somehow vacant at any point.Thanks for the help!

Short sales can easily take longer than 5 months to close.4) Has anyone noticed any common pitfalls of this strategy?

So, if you want to invest in the market the TSP is a great way to do so and offers some great benefits to tap into your money for things like real estate easily.  

But if he has an easily solvable credit problem (like his credit card balance is over 30% of the line), it might only take a week or so to get it ironed out.

Worrying about the difference in a nominal amount of money doesn't make sense, you can easily blow that $1,000 on a night on the town with your wife.For me the first thing I am looking for when I buy a property is "How many people are going to see my sign on this building"

With your combined income and the debt you listed, you should easily qualify for a loan.    

I think there's lots of variables and that I care more about where yields are going to be in 5 years than where they've been the past 5 years (for buy and hold).But, anything you put together that helped me compare different areas more easily than looking at raw census and raw area government data would be interesting.