In some areas there are incentives for creating affordable housing and even special voucher programs for housing vets.

I signed up for BP pro so I can use their tools to train myself in finding deals in my market.Can't wait to meet new and great people here!!

I've listened to podcasts religiously, met locally with some amazing people, been completely inspired at meetups, and trained myself to analyze deals and run the numbers. 

@Nicholas Almgren, @Conor Hesch has a program with U.S.

He is THE Storage Guy and has a great program.  

I performed the programming behind this one: estimatingrepairs.net

@Joel OwensI feel like I should pay you for the advice you have given me.I understand that research and knowing your market is key, and I hope my background in advanced statistical analyses will be able to give me an edge is some way since I have access to programs a lot of other real estate agents do not have.I'm actually working on a quick-fix analyses sheet and would love to share it with you afterwards and see what you think of it.Oren K.I definitely want to work with investors.I understand that each sale will be harder, the commissions will be smaller and the research will be more extensive.

Greg,Interesting question, CAPEX ,Maintenance and Vacancy figures are in the analysis to cover the seasonal cost,any major projects that will come up and costs that you will occur while an apartment is vacant, but as to figure in at a certain year and how much you need to set aside and what your exact holding costs will be for an apartment while under rehab, i have not seen a calculator out there that has that, i do not know if there is a software program out there that may do that, hopefully someone does for you.

Well, I'm not going to give you hype and encourage you to lure you into any program or strategy of acquiring rentals or doing lending.

I always recommend newbies to start out as licensed assistants to top agents.If you do decide you want to go at it on your own then find a brokerage that offers a lot of good training on marketing and getting clients.