By playing this game, I am taking the risk while I am rehabbing the new property, that no major expenses will come up with the old property that will put me in the red for that month.If you are talking about flipping a property, then sure you will live off part of that income while using the profit for another purchase.

The house has major structural issue (sadly) and will require major capital to fix. on a side note. the property is involved in some sort of fraud lawsuit!

Or they need a new garbage disposal when they have jammed it with a rock.The majority of my tenant repair calls, I get there and there is nothing to repair: like the tenant who called to say the fridge blew up and wouldn't work.

I have a local map book (Thomas Brothers/Rand McNally have ones for most major metro areas that often print subdivision names on the map) and I mark it up with “good, bad, ok†and other notations.

I find the vast majority of my deals through personal contacts - i.e. people calling me.

But its nice to see that the general frame work could work.

So, you have an investment that's sucking money out of your pocket each money, that will take huge bites as soon as you have some major expense or a lengthy vacancy, and that's declining in value.

The vast majority of newbies fail in a short period of time because they don't understand the business.

By the way, I majored in the hard sciences.

I guess one of the major questions to be answered is how a typical private lender might structure a deal?