Put an ad on Craigslist and you will get a list of folks with snakes and a pickup.The alternative is to buy stocks, bonds or commodities.

You might think that just comes from working harder longer, but not so much as smarter.I'm afraid this is getting way to long, but it will tie together....You must set up your business that is appropriate for your skills, financing capacity, the population served, the market for your product and be able to compete against the alternative opportunities your customer base may have.

I'll assume it's 7 rooms...Anyways, the only way you will get them to stop using the stove is if you provide an alternative that works better for them.

However the way you ask makes me think it would not be a practical alternative.

My parents are both institutionalized professionals and always pestered me to just "get a job" but they also sheltered me a great deal, so I was actually pretty unaware of any alternatives.

Can’t do much better.However, I do agree with your conclusion, that I can probably do better with an alternative, such as hard money loans or even trust deed investing.

Don't forget to include your closing costs to buy the property as part of your beginning-of-year-one cash outflow.If IRR is not well into double digits, then consider looking at alternative properties.

Alternatively leaving things out or under improving a property in a high end market place can also make your property a tough sell.

The best alternative is when they're using a PM that will provide you the information with their approval.But at the end of the day, your very detailed inspection of the property, and your market research on average tenancy (to determine how much spending on turns) will give you the best read on how much you'll face in maintenance.

Another alternative would have been to refi all of the contributed cash out also, making the loan payment closer to $11K/mo, giving $9K/mo net cash without any money left in the deal.Someone will ask...why didn't you get your cash out and take the $9K/mo?