You may not have noticed yet because maybe you're managing it yourself (earning the property management fee of about $75/month) and doing maintenance yourself and avoiding (so far) big sporadic expenses like paying for a new roof or fixing the damage after an eviction.If you refi to 30 years on the $58K, you could get the payment down to about $385, making it only a little worse than break even.

If they can not afford the place now they will not be a positive tenant.In many ways hard money lenders avoid at all cost lending to homeowners.

And in order to avoid the taxation to the said individual can I write the check to myself and then buy the proeprty for said individual and worry about taxes later?

Doing a double close avoids the apprehension of the bank to do a "assigned" contract.

Isn't it possible to avoid any taxation by doing a 1031 exchange and purchasing more land or multiple properties.

(I have removed the rest of this paragraph giving a full explaination).I do however totally agree that there is a lot for me to learn and this forum is a great resource for information.I have removed the rest of this paragraph in order to avoid breaking any rules or causing offence.

I have family that lives there and like most places it has some very nice areas and some areas you should avoid.

The strategy here should be: avoid describing your skills even offer them with a probable solution according to their interests or worries.

Starting out, I would avoid high risk projects.

All kinds of discussions about where to buy towels, how to deal with lock outs, what about guests that do not vacant on time, managing units when you only have seasonal demand, how to spot fraud or scams and what to do with Spring Break group requests (party central in your rental).Send me a message and I can point you to the URL for the mailing list.I have some vacation rentals, I have looked at the numbers in Hawaii, Spain, Prague and Vermont.