What is keeping us from turning things around is the ongoing Finger Pointing of blame.

Your initial plan may be doable although highly stressful when dealing with ongoing unpredictable costs you have no savings to cover.

These expenses will mostly be paid for out of Dept. of Education loans.I have been researching tax sales back home (Carroll County, GA) and was planning on going that route to start because it seems like the cheapest way to enter the market.

Most of them were built between 1890 and 1920 and I imagine will have significant ongoing maintenance.

Buying a property where I get 80% equity, he gets 20% and we split ongoing expenses accordingly.

You have to add taxes and insurance on top of that, along with ongoing maintenance.

This is known as forced appreciation and would be a subcategory of the appreciation aspect in the original 4 methods to earn from rentals.The problem is, until you sell, appreciation and debt paydown is only cashed in when you sell, so in an ongoing scenario, the only cash you make while owning rentals is the cash flow.

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Many months you will actually "pocket" the phony cash flow amount, after accounting for any other ongoing expenses like a PM or HOA.

As this is an ongoing project I don't wnat to discuss too much.