I have studied a lot of material form foreclosures to Lease Options, but have not implemented any strategies as of yet.

If you pay me another I will think of something to certify you in.I have never heard of them and know nothing about the material they teach.

Consider all your buying closing costs, holding costs (utilities, insurance, property maintenance, taxes), and the selling costs.

As with most books and educational materials, there is always a bit of fluff.

The utilities are not split (so they are currently included in the rent), but once a tenant moves out we plan to split them and make the tenants pay them.We plan to offer $25,000 and assume we can negotiate to $28,000.Using Mike's 50% operating expenses, that leaves $500 for NOI.

You could consider refinancing your primary residence using a HUD rehab loan (allows up to 97 ARV) for homeowners needing to make repairs as low as 5,000 (program will advance up to 50% of labor/materials at closing to minimize your out of pocket expense).

Well on a $400,000 house, you won't be buying fixtures and such at Home Depot because a house like that will get quality materials.

The tenant moved out and owes me for last month and a half rent plus utilities.

Also contact an appraiser and inform them of you intentions to purchase and ask it they will provide you with a desk review or approximate market value in exchange for consideration of utilizing their future services.

For example, you completely ommitted advertising, management (even if you do it), maintenance (even if you do it), legal expenses, evictions, setout fees, damage done by tenants (in excess of the security deposit), entity maintenance, utilities paid by the owner during rehabs and vacancies, capital expenses (although not technically an operating expense), lawsuits, etc, etc, etc (I could go on and on and on).The good thing is that you're at break even, so this is not a disaster.