I occasionally take renters out on the Lake on the weekends just for gas money. 

I do occasionally buy with cash and then refi to get my money back, but I normally only have a LTV of between 50% and 60% after the refi.MikeMike,Thanks for the reply.

You can also get them when you do your change of address online via the usps website.If you sign up with lowes's and homedepot's websites you will get coupons occasionally was well

It's pretty challenging to find anything that meets the 1% rule here, but there are deal that occasionally pop up. 

The other 2k is just "bonus reserve contribution" each month, and it can occasionally be safely utilized as desired (for that trip to Mexico), because I've already budgeted my cap ex reserve contribution into the expenses for the property.

I believe that if you build it "they" will come; "they" being the types of people like myself who want to be close to downtown and work/school and have a tough skin not to be intimidated by crime stats, or the occasional cop chase. 

I occasionally see nice two family's for reasonable prices. 

@Greg GaudetI bought my first property (a two bedroom cabin in Branson, Missour that we use occasionally) almost 4 years ago for 130k.

Obviously, every place that has houses in this range have occasional issues (of our 11 units, we have had one issue each year with a tenant having to be evicted or moving out without paying one month of rent), but one thing that is a huge positive for most of our houses is that they were in the New Castle historic district, so we were able to fix them up and receive a 20% historic tax credit on the cost of fixing up the properties we bought (we bought a considerable amount at their annual tax sale).

Occasionally, I've seen windows below this threshold, and when we redo the windows, we adjust the framing to comply with the 24" requirement.