The two septic tanks are about as old as the property (25-30 years).We spent a good amount of time talking about her garden and the trees she planted and looking for fresh chicken eggs (we found 4 eggs). 

All the best PS some examples, my 21 unit, feb  2200 , March 1500, May- Sept, avg about 140 per month,  

I believe @Brandon Turner used this example in his Rental Property book, but it is a great and simple way to look at leverage.

For example, think of a "mirror-like" duplex, but remove the range from the one of the "kitchens" (still have a fridge and sink in both "kitchens"), and add a door that connects the two units, that way you can say that it's still a part of your house.

It's just an example of thinking creatively.

Where as, if a broke investor started off with a 50K property and put only 5k worth of work into it and 60 days later its worth 125K. that is a excellent move. otherwise it will take a monthly cashflow focused investor forever to to stack up that amount of money vs my example 0f 60 days. 

For example, if you have a 3 bd 2 ba apt that you want to rent for $1,500, and the Section 8 program says the market rate is $1,300, they will pay the $1,300 and the tenants have to pay the rest.

I have been analyzing this deal to death and I feel as though I need a fresh outlook to provide suggestions.

An example, we had a client that had a property take along their frontage appraised at 1.3M.

Two areas where I build a safety margin are cash on hand (I want to be able to make   x  number of payments with no correlated income) and spread (the difference between rents and all expected expenses ie expected cash flow--the higher this number is the easier it becomes to make the debt payments)So for example say I am looking at a duplex for 100K and I have 50K in cash.