If you were flipping it, I think this could be worth doing, since now people tend to want to buy with larger kitchens, more open floor plans and would be more likely to forgo a dining room in favor of a dining space to get it.  

Plus with all the New York tenant laws changing, it seemed more advantageous to look at states more favorable to landlords. 

Good morning, personally I am heavily invested the muskegon market,  yields and cap rates are all in the investors favor, rents continue to climb, demand is crazy high, resulting in higher valuations,  which is having me consider selling some of my multi units to raise capital to get into mobile home parks.

Consider the tenant a vested landscaper and pay a little bit for the favor. 

So these news articles keep popping up about landlords demanding sexual favors in lieu of rent.

You can do this by showing a favorable debt service coverage ratio (does it still cash flow at 75% occ), purchased below comparable sales, etc.

Let that grow for a few years in the background as you start your path to learning.As far as building credit, just have mom add you as a authorized user for her card, which would issue a card in your name, and let her just shred it or something if she's concerned about usage... what will really matter is you get some credit history that matches her use of the card... caveat here is only if she's good at paying things off... if she has bad credit habits, you'll just inherit that... but yeah, then once you're at 18, you'll have 2 years of credit history that hopefully is good, and you can leverage that towards your first loan with much more favorable terms than your average 18 year old.Recommended reads...Set for Life by Scott TrenchDrink from the fountain of information that is Investopedia.comAnd of course... keep up here on BP.

Usually, landlords enjoy more favorable conditions in red (Republican) states and municipalities where laws are more landlord friendly - easier to evict, for example.

However, I am not in favor of this for various reasons. 

However, there is dramatic illiquidity in the marketplace and secondary markets are still not healthy enough for shops to offer favorable terms.