I'm a 37y/o career firefighter in Meriden, CT.

He said okay, buyer flaked, and I ended up with the property.  3 months ago today actually.The property was in bad shape.   

As you suspected, I have been spinning my wheels in my career gaining ground slowly and only recently have I made any significant gains in my “market value”.

Here's what I want from you guys and I figured there would be a lot of pro help for this...If you were vetting my underwhelming knowledge, too make sure that I know what I'm doing as far as at least getting a deal,maybe good, but just definitely not bad, what would be your first 5 or ten questions you would ask me and would want to make sure I knew the answer yo about the deal, or general understanding before I commit to buying my first property?

I'm sure there are bad areas there just like everywhere else but I'm just hoping to get some perspective.

I joined just last week in a feverish attempt to gain as much knowledge as possible to start my lifelong career in Real Estate Investing.

Also, I'm at a disadvantage not knowing the area, the costs associated with utilities and maintenance, upgrades, etc, and the good and bad areas of town.

The equity, the convenience that its super close to me, the experience, and my confidence that this area seems to have a good outlook in its potential growth and if I’m being honest a 300 dollar payment for a potentially 500,000 house doesn’t seem bad at all.

Sooner or later, allowing your tenant to do things like this goes bad and leads to you losing lots of money.

I have mad a series of smart financial decisions over the last 10 years that have put me in a great position to go out on my own and take this on as a full time career.