. - Greg was making certain assumptions about your operating expenses on this free and clear home and about what the payment for the line of credit will be to arrive at his opinion that you "would not be able to afford," this and remain cash flow positive however actual real life results may vary.You can often get a line of credit on a rental property for up to 70-80% depending on the credit union. www.penfed.org I believe offers a 4.75% interest only line of credit up to 80% for a max of 3 financed properties last I checked, but you may check them out when you have free time.This roughly translates to $39.58 monthly interest payment for every $10,000.00 borrowed. 

@Jefferson Grant       My assumption was that you were going to buy it from a Bank.

My basic assumption in all this is he is crowdfunding for properties in the area, but my question is how can you tell a good from a bad crowdfunding??? 

Assumption: Total assessed value is using the ECAD tax assessed value from County. 

Since im making several assumptions in my numbers Here they are so you can play with them.  

It was never brought up and I made a stupid assumption that closing costs would be paid by the seller.

Assumption on loan balance of $577,000.

Of course, I want positive cash flow and have been searching for that situation but with rent prices being based upon median prices, comps and educated guesses/assumptions, there seems to be little guarantee that my rent-to-price ratio will be at least 1% or that my Cash-on-Cash Return will be positive, let alone within the preferable 15-25% range. 

So I'm engaging two people--the broker and the project manager/designer--whereas your recommendation would be to use one...Nevertheless, let's work under the assumption that's the way we're going to do it. 

It sounds like you have a good scholarship, so some of my above assumptions may be off.