If you have the skills, the best situation is to find a property that needs work, complete some value-add improvements, then you can raise rents.  

Personal loan via credit Union for expenses4.

Another avenue would be to use some of that 150-200k to pay down your mortgage, then take out a line of credit on your home to get started in the Real Estate Investing world.

Some lessons learned, ownership is expensive and time consuming, roommates never want to help with house improvements, and make sure to include the income on taxes.

I choose the tenant based on credit and rental history without any set ratios as the quality of applications varies from one neighborhood to the next.

Can you make improvements to your current home?  

She was a agent years ago in another state and it's likely that it'll be less work for her to renew(continuing ed credits) than for me to start from scratch.  

I currently own a few rentals in different states, but since getting my real estate license i have started looking at family and friends for prospecting new deals as a new agent.I have a family member who has been renting houses for as long as i can remember between her and her boyfriend, but they both have some bad credit due to falling behind a few years back after both losing their jobs and juggling life for a while tell they found new jobs.I am a bit unsure about this idea still due to the fact that i have been running numbers on multi-family homes to purchase in the near future and turn into rentals, but i want to help them if it's a viable idea...I wanted to get your opinion on maybe purchasing a house based on their needs and running a lease option on the house for them to purchase down the road when they have the credit again....Right now they are renting a 3/1/1 for $1200/month and there is a lot of 3bed houses around them that are in the 100k and below that would meet the needs of them, im just worried about buying the house for them tieing up my own money and not have enough financing available to continue purchasing investment properties as my rental income from all my current rentals is my only income coming in right now as i start the career of an agent.

He wants to provide easy credit to people for homes again, he also wants to help people with bad credit scores due to foreclosures (I guess if your mortgage commencement date was between 2006 and 2008/9?)."

You then have remodeled to sell to middle class, but they all started moving to homes, and now you have to get working class, that cannot support your rent payments needed for you to make a profit because of all your improvements or refinance.