If this had been a tenant with a solid payment record for two years or more and was suddenly hit by hard times, well, then I'd go with Russel's first suggestion.

Suddenly, their broken/lost/no service cell phone comes back to life ;)

And I found out that the guys were usually trouble because now she is supporting whatever habits they have and suddenly the rent starts being late or not coming at all???

It’s not like the dope smokers are going to suddenly quit toking reefer or anything .

So many tenants who want out of leases will all of a sudden become a pain in the rear, with complaints about mold or plumbing or bugs or whatever.  

If you have an extensive network of friends, family, business colleagues, neighbors etc to tap into, then you might make decent money in the first year.If I were you I'd definitively keep the job, for 2 main reasons: real estate isn't glamorous like it is on TV and as James mentioned most people quit, and realistically in the first year you won't be very busy unless you do time intensive stuff such as cold calling / door knocking etc.Trust me, you don't become a RE agent and all of a sudden the phone starts ringing non stop.

Sometimes you'll be dry for months, and then all the sudden have 5 that are approved that you need to close within a month.

Then in 1999, the city changed the zoning to allow all of these old offices to change their zoning to residential or hotel and not have to provide parking (which being built in the early 20th century in a city that at the time had a huge public transit system, none of them had).Anyway, the point is a change in zoning suddenly gave them life and value.

And, once under contract, sellers have an AMAZING ability to suddenly produce paperwork and information that was previously "impossible" to find.Granted I am in a market where you might have to write a dozen full asking price offers, just to get one accepted.

what you should about Baltimore you get what you pay for.If you are going to look at houses lower than 100K, it can be a huge loss or decent gain, it can be a coin toss.Anything over 150K or more, you are getting closer to safer areas and lower the risk and lower the cash flow.You decide what you want basically.When people says bad stuff, they all invest in areas where you would not get out of their car, get spend close to nothing on houses and complain about it. then go spen 5 times more and suddenly decide that is better.I am a baltimre investor/agent, I am pretty happy and dont have one house in the hood.