It seems more your fault for choosing the "lying" contractors from the tenants point of view, if you ask them to pay up, I'm sure they would.

@Dillon Clark-don't pay extra down on your mortgage-don't use a HELOC-save up as much as you can-hope this helps

If you go that route, focus on stable, landlord-friendly areas with strong rental demand, and build a reliable team on the ground (property manager, agent, contractor).Regarding property management, it depends on your bandwidth and goals.

Quote from @John Mason: If you are wanting to get ahead I would pay the  100 usd on fiverr and get it done and  then go to next  step  in  your journey and then learn the way to do it on the side so that you do not lose time..hope I made sense I do that now.

Right now, my focus is on leveraging my degree and skills to land a higher-paying job, increase my annual income, and ultimately grow my net worth.Real estate has always been something I’ve been interested in, and my long-term goal is to start investing in both real estate and retirement to build financial security.

You could also use a listing-only service from a brokerage where you'd pay them $200-$300 to list it on the MLS, and you/your team would take all incoming calls from interested buyers, but it's a bit slimy since the seller may see it listed on the market when you appeared to be buying it.That would be the maximum value-capture of your off-market lead machine.

I had a nice conversation with them and approved their booking for Aug 2025.So, it pays to keep an eye out for a repeat booking that looks fake as they could just not be seeing you responses. 

We have an existing mortgage (backed by these 2 lots and 2 others) and given the increase in appraised value there is no need to pay anything back to the lender when selling the lot.

Also, when I switched to new management, Northpoint suddenly issued new "fees" (some back-dated for 2 years ago) and wouldn't pay out the money that they owed me.

They sent a new contract trying to bind me to still pay $200 per month, which I refused to sign.