@Trish Geyer : I am in the same boat as I am looking for my first investment property and my wife is very apprehensive. 

Needless to say that anyone that had purchased in the last 5 years has done well as long as they were in areas that moved up with appreciating rents and values.Unfortunately, not all of America had done that.I still have a friend of mine that bought in Bristol, CT that have not seen much value or rent appreciation although it had maintained it's consistency.The problem is that he totally missed the boat on the appreciating areas which was where he lived.Unfortunately, investing in non-appreciating areas but living and not owning in the appreciating area is a formula that spelled disaster for him.

Option 1) is more for guys like me with wife and kids who would like to invest but not rock their financial boat.

Hi @John Sampson,I am in the same boat.

I'm in the exact same boat as you with my condo in Sandy Springs.

I'm in the "looking for my first" boat as well.  

They do not want to rock the boat or have a big headache.

With that being said, I am in a very similar boat, good job nice credit but no $$.

But I'm pretty sure I missed that boat.

Although I would love to try house hacking, it’s just not doable for us at this time.We are also very interested in commercial investments and possibly boat and rv storage down the road, but the focus now is just getting going.With that being said, I’m not sure we have the ability right now to take complete charge over an entire rehab project.