I suppose with the 70% factors in all the mishaps, and fees to sell the house etc?

Usury is actually factored on the effective interest rate, otherwise known as the annual percentage rate or APR.

To me it seems like a simple problem containing two factors; 1. the mortgage (including taxes insurance etc), 2. the rent.The only solution I can is to to make RENT greater than MORTGAGE.

I was pretty sure that was the way it worked, but wanted to make sure so that I can factor that in when thinking of my cash flow.

Actually I would say there is a decent chance that you've never had investment property in your life.And to be honest I am perfectly okay with your very probable lack of personal experience with real estate investing, but you might want to come on a LITTLE less strong next time when you've never been in the trenches yourself.Its very different when its YOUR building that you are remodeling, and unless and until the right profit margin is there with the right risk/reward factor, most serious investors are NOT going to jump in.

However, I do know that one disadvantage with these properties is that they are not as easy to sell as is the single family property.That's the second issue.That being said, any advice as to what to do with either the first or the second issue or, ideally, with both will be greatly appreciated?

Rbader, Mike can definitely be a little overly strong in his reponses, but what he is saying is right.When factoring an income/expense statement for a rental property, you will need to factor in ALL the expenses.

Ideally, I would like to outright sell the property since I would recover all the cash and I can move on to my next deal, but the market is somewhat slow here.

The particular part of the area that this house is in is the lower end of this area, so pulling a straight average price per square foot for the area would be inaccurate because it factors in the other very nice houses located in a different part of this area code.

The tax rate is the same for every home in a given town and is determined by a few factors.