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.

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?

One major advantage is you know you are going to get at least part of the rent each and every month.However, these are all run locally and the standards, responsiveness to landlord concerns and issues varies widely from place to place.I don't have any section 8 tenants.

I think you will also have many more repairs than are found initially. 8 years is a long time for a property to be vacant without major damage being done to the property.

The fact remains that the vast majority of newbies fail in a relatively short period of time.