@Jay Hinrichs --That's a good point, I could act as the agent in these cases, and earn a commission, But what I am really looking for is my own experience in addition to the money.  

So I'm not at all discounting the importance of the money.

Glad to see another addition to the Cincinnati investors.

If it costs $50k to fix and you're only getting a $50k discount, it's not worth it.

They can do this cheaper than I can because they can get discounts of buying stamps in bulk (2million at a time), and I do not have the resources to do that on that large of a scale.

The additional factors that are at play here is I still have 1.5 years to be able to get FHA loan or 2.5 years for a conventional due to a short sale of my primary residence way before I started pursuing REI this past April.

You might also have marketing expenses with turnover, in addition to vacancy.Jim.

It could be either a coop or a condo - in a coop you own shares in the buildings corporation that entitle you to occupy a specific unit, in a condo you own the physical space. they'll have either maintenance fees or HOA fees as an additional expense, and these can go up whenever the board voted on them.

How difficult can that make obtaining additional financing?

I plan to do work on the house in several rooms during that year, but it would be nice to have the additional income to offset costs from renting a room or two.