One finally made an offer we grudgingly accepted, and he is refusing to pay the bird dog the $500 and expects us to pay for it.I buy houses and pay the bird dogs $500.

You could hire a couple of bird dogs to drive for dollars for you.

It can be harder to manage over an hour and a half away and even with the lower rents it takes a while to find good tenants because people there just don't make as much--and we don't allow dogs, which many people in the country have. 

One way you could start now is by wholesaling properties or bird dogging for other investors in your area to find deals, use this money to purchase homes or to fund the repairs with other investors.

Any way I have no dog in the hunt but I do ( as a veteran HML in my own right) agree with Account Closed if you can get your principal back great and some interest  that's a huge bonus..

We are considering hiring a “Bird Dog.”

Hey Guys,So my girlfriend and I were walking the dog (I was actually "walking for dollars", she doesn't know that though) and I found a vacant looking single family home in a great neighborhood.  

There are almost 600,000 members on BP, people with little to no experience like myself, and then all the way up to the big dogs who have been successfully investing for years!

They have some dogs that bark, and bother other tenants, but they always pay on time, and don't cause much other issue.  

This map is a bit outdated:  http://www.akc.org/akc-dog-lovers/bsl-popularity-on-decline-nationwide/If you want to change any laws on HOAs it always takes a vast majority (in my primary residency case it is 75% and in my rental place it is 61%).