RE is a long game - you need to think 10 years time.3) Buying a cash flow negative property is okay if you only plan on owning one or two properties.

When you add in expenses and vacancy factor it might be cash flow negative.

Both are pretty safe and near enough to good/cool parts of town. 30's era 3/1's mostly usually requiring some rehab or updates.

Gross rent per month is usually the only figure that's calculated as a percentage of purchase price (to firstly see if it meets your investing criteria eg. 1% or 2% "rules"), whereas all expenses are then (usually) worked out as a percentage of rent - not purchase price (eg. the "50% rule")!

Every year, we would go to the beach I would go through my usual routine of getting the real estate magazines from the corner machine and sort through them looking for something that I thought I might be able to buy.

With carpet, I usually go with one of the more expensive carpets instock at Lowes, and upgrade the pad.  

The pet didn't negatively impact the unit when the owner left and overall was something we would do again.The bad experiences have been really bad, as in destructive to the unit bad.  

It's usually identified as a non-market family or non-market trust transfer.

@Louis Mannikko  if your 401k is a solo 401k that you control.. you may want to look at investing NOtes or with a HML.. this is a very good use for those funds.on the fix and flip you may want to consider partnering up.. just make sure whoever you partner with is vetted thourougly.. plenty of " my idea and your Money guys out there" you can go on amazon or E bay.Look for any of the guru's written material and videos you can get those for next to nothing. look through them there are usually nuggets in each one that you can use.you can also spend untold hours on BP asking questions and reading and listening to pod casts etc.. of course this is free and just depends on if you have the time for that.

As for flipping, that is usually an early strategy for people with a buy and hold mentality and is used to build up funds to buy properties.