My parents want to get a house closer to town. so my thought was, could I potentially just purchase a multifamily house in Lafayette Indiana using a low down payment financing, since I would plan on being there for a while myself, then rent the other side to them (under market value and less than the crazy high mortgage they pay now, but still high enough to fill an emergency fund into the house) I would be using my own low living expenses to build up capital for my next investment property.

You buy it and fix up the renter's side first, and let's say you manage to rent it for $1000/monthly, but $750 of that goes to expenses - mortgage, loans to fix it, insurance, etc - so you have $250/month to go along with your $20k/annual, so by year 3 you have enough to buy a second unit. 

My favorite is using the Intuit Self Employed App because it automatically tracks miles as part of the monthly price and updates your expense tracking.  

Both offices had a good handful of bodies at the locations along with a few appeared to be customers onsite, but i'm a little worried about all the fees and monthly expenses i was presented with along with the commision rates.

My question is, are those good enough margins after you calculate additional expenses?

Expenses (in addition to P&I, insurance and taxes) being 3% vacancy, 5% repairs, 10% cap ex, 7% property management.  

The first thing that comes to my mind is to reduce expenses and bring the P+I down as much as possible to reduce overhead and provide a cashflow buffer.

@Charles S.The 50 % Rule States: That 50% of gross scheduled income (GSI) goes out over time to cover expenses not including debt coverage.The 1%, 2% and the 50% rule is meant to act as a quick analysis tool, to insure the deal is actually deal.

Great area - here are my numbers: Monthly Annual Purchase Price 168,500   Monthly Rent 2200 Cash to Close (20% + $4k close costs) 33,700   Annual Rent 26400                 Property Tax $375 $4,500     Insurance 100 1200     Mortgage 835 10020     Vacancy (5%) 110 1320     Repairs (5%) 110 1320             Total Expenses $1,530 $18,360   Net Income $670 $8,040   Net Income without Mortgage $1,505 $18,060       Cap Rate 5%       Cash on Cash 24%    

After some half-assed, yet still expensive repairs, I got a home warranty.