I totally forgot to mention that you'll have to pay yourself a reasonable salary from a weird fictitious business that has no purpose other than to dodge taxes. 

When performing a quick preliminary screening on those websites (i.e. to exclude obvious bad deals), do you usually use the 50% rule (or similar % rule) to estimate expenses?

If they complete the job 14 calendar days before the date they gave us (28 total calendar days from contracted completion date) we will kick in a $1k to $3k bonus depending on size of job. 

I am not sure if it is a smart decision to use part of the $40,000 to pay off that car and just put the payments into the new mortagage for the next 10 or 15 years or just continue to make the car payment and use that total amount of money im getting for the down payment for my next 1 or 2 investments.

A hodge-podge of updates over 100+ years have left the houses with awkward spaces and outdated everything.The larger house is 1,625sqft duplex with a 3 bedroom unit on the first floor and 2 bedroom on the second floorThe small house is 1,150sqft duplex with 1 bedroom on the first floor and 1 bedroom on the second floorAsking price (FSBO) is around $240k for both (7 bedrooms total, 4 doors) but I'm fairly certain there is plenty of wiggle roomThese houses need *complete* remodels.

Upon closing and finalizing the loan, I realized the mortgage / taxes / insurance / PMI totaled out to $640 a month, which isn't bad in my opinion, but a little more than the $550 I was hoping for.

. § 91.006), your landlord must make reasonable efforts to re-rent your unit—no matter what your reason for leaving—rather than charge you for the total remaining rent due under the lease.

Land where duplexes can be built are pretty easy to find.You will need 20-25% of total cost for down payment/equity for a construction loan.  

Total loan amount including closing costs was $318,313.

Totaling over 122 doors.