I must put 15% down which takes the loan to low to get a 30 year mortgage.

Your criteria "working class, low crime" is what I was thinking as well.  

This may be a long post, but I thought it would be good to walk through everything step-by-step, and explain my thinking along the way.If you want to stick with me through it all, here we go:I was not going to be getting a conventional mortgage for my first property for a number of reasons.First, I am still annoyed at the hoops I had to jump through to get a mortgage for my primary residence.Second, my liquid cash was on the lower end.Third, the properties that I would need to start out with would not be financeable anyway.Fourth, my DTI is on the high side, due to the decision that we made to take out a HELOC to complete interior improvements on my primary house.So, I decided that my path was going to be to form a single member LLC, and take a loan from my 401(k) at work to finance the down payment.Since I do not view the 401(k) loan as a long-term solution, I am treating like hard money, and pay it off ASAP.So, my first deal would be a flip, or a rental that was such a good deal, that I could re-fi out and pull all my cash out.I decided to reach out to the commercial lending department of the local credit union, which I am a member.The person I talked to (who became my lender) is fantastic.I told him what types of properties I was looking for, and that I’d look to turn them into rentals, or to flip them.I will never forget his response, which reminded me why I love this credit union.He said:“Typically, the deals you are talking about are much smaller than the deals we like to do.However, we also realize that you can not get to that level unless someone helps you get there.So, if the numbers make sense, we will see if any of our products fit.”Awesome!

You then are attempt to acquire leads with "direct mail" and "driving for dollars".Direct Mail is a low return marketing channel, and the very best you can expect (even Kohl's, Vons, any local real estate broker) is a 1-3 percent return rate. 

I am 48 now and I figure that I will need somewhere between 40 and 50 doors to retire at the same level of life that I am living now.

I used Lending Club and Prosper to finance houses that were low cost. 

The other one that fell through had a judgement filed against the homeowner right after we did the quit claim with the mortgagor and were about to close and redeem the property from the person that bought it at the sheriff sale.That judgement terminated the mortgagor's (and therefore our) ability to redeem that property.The response rate on our marketing campaigns has been extremely low; south of 1%, in fact.Our campaigns include door knocking, leaving notes on doors, as well as mailing the property and new addresses of the owners (when applicable).  

He is very low key and has little foot print n the web  what is there looks good but I am concerned at just how little there is.  

We have one roommate living with us.My thoughts are to remodel the current house add a master suite to the bottom of our split level foyer.

This is the level of how most homes are being rehabbed.