This one might workout but over time you will bat less than 50% with your current approach.This is why.

I guess my question is what deal COULD I work out of it?

If you can rent a room for $400, see if you can't get him to work out a scenario where you pay him about $600 a month.

How would the risk work out on this?  

thank you, @MattM.The deal didn't work out, but I'll keep your offer in mind.

Those numbers make sense and now I see how I need the ratios to work out - you rock!

This makes sense for a fix and flip property, but how does it work out for a buy and hold rental?

I would love to still rent it, but I need to figure out a way that would work out well.

Assuming you're not in Louisville, here are some approaches you can take in your market to get into a place with less than 20% down:-Owner financing - work out terms that require small down payment with the seller-Private Equity - find somebody to partner with you, then purchase property with LLC and get commercial loan-Private Debt - find somebody to loan you the money for the entire deal or part of down payment (latter is not a great idea as you should disclose to the bank and as others mentioned this will mess up your DTI)-Hard Money - purchase distressed property with short term loan, fix up, refinance with a cashout loan.

If the leads that come in from other listings don't work out for those listings they can spin them off to your listing. in addition to that most good listing agents will have paid ads etc on those type of sites that will put your listing in featured positioning instead of getting lost in the long list of other listings.If you plan to continue to do it yourself here is a list of websites that can help get your home more exposure:- social media- FB, twitter, linkedin, google+-forums- local forums in your area, as well as real estate forums like BP, trulia, Zillow,-posting sites- CL, backpage, ebay,findmyroof.com, classifiedads.com, realrentals.com, rentalads.comUse syndicating websites like postlets.com that will send it to:ZillowHotPadsYahooFrontdoorZillow MobileHotPads MobileBackpageByOwnerMLSEnormoOodleTrovitZumperLovelyTruliaOthers-List it on the MLS, a good RE agent will have their own site/blog to add it to.Here is a video explaining why we are able to lease out our rental properties quickly to a qualified tenant in Vegas within 30 days.