Not only that but a powerful smell of cat urine from the 7 cats i counted as they ran passed me when i entered the front door!

Its a situation where families can't count on the sale of their grandparents house to pay the bills after they've passed away because of it.

I talked to lender and he said if you want to refi to 20 years again now, your mnthly payment will go down to 2300 which will put me in break even point (not counting maintenance and other things).

There is a 3 property (not unit)  minimum and they do not count your personal home to that number, only investment properties. 

If I were to rent, based on the 50% rule that I read about here, I'd have to charge $1,890 just to break even on my mortgage (and that's not counting any other expenses that I'd likely incur).

Still, the idea that you could run a furnished, luxury hotel-like accommodation with paid utilities, cable, wifi, etc. with only 18% in expenses is probably pretty wishful, even if you count yourself as an unpaid booking agent, maintenance person, housekeeper, and host when figuring your expenses.  

Votes, Post counts, and known history of posters matters to me. 

I have no desire to grow for the sake of growing - its about hitting a number to replace my current income and getting out of the rat race at which point in time I'll enjoy "retirement" in the sense of working on passion projects and not for a paycheck. 8 years is my target, I currently have 4 doors and I'd like to add 6-10 more.... although my door count was based on the returns I'm seeing on my fourplex - I might need 20 if each property is only going to net me $4k/mo :/

With that amount of cash, if you want to be totally passive, $350K at 8% yield will give you about $2300 a month cashflow not counting a share of appreciation of the property - with NO WORK on your part so you can continue sailing  (maybe even throughout the year!).

Last year I could count the ones that were not completed on one hand.