You will always be evil in the eyes of the tenant and most importantly, don't let it get to you when **** hits the fan. 

If you want to catch the dog there have a friend knock on the door and see if they hear or see a dog.  

I enjoy taking photos and have a critical eye for issues as well.

And if you want to incorporate a bit of investment into your primary residence, then you can house hack and rent each room out.

Not only did they misprice the value, they ran into costly issues with contractors because their Mentor was probably selling the next training program and not keeping a watchful eye on what their students were doing.

It has been an eye opener on how to do research.  

@Cassandra Alessio fantastic advice there from @Benjamin O'Connor.You want to show them how another park in their town will benefit them because most are just thinking "Another eye-sore and tax burden?

I'll stay the course and keep my eyes on the chairs that ARE there, the ones that are ALWAYS there for the DIY handyman investor: hold on to solid properties, find solid tenants, offer solid pricing and solid maintenance.

But there's a catch. 

And you've got to pay attention to those types of catches so to speak this business has been around for many years and at the end of the day those types of things are few and far between so you got to be careful of who the snake oil salesman or saleswoman is as a general rule these types of strategies are out there can be executed and done.So i'm not saying they can't be done it's just that they're few and far between for the average joe out there so the options out there are go with traditional type of financing i.e fannie mae freddie mac fha your normal mortgage lending and financing right that's one avenue where you're going to get your lowest interest rate with your least amount of money.