I am my condo Board President, and we are about 1/3 rented out.  

If it was a huge liability, it would be one thing, but it's a very modest house and very affordable.Cash Reserves: Easily able to put 25-30% down on our first property in the price range we are looking for with enough to cover the holding and rehab costs.REI Aspirations: SFRs, passive income to cover living expenses and re-investment and, of course, financial freedom.Questions: Even though we have a lot of student loan debt at low interest and banks would be less likely to give us more than a few loans on different properties, wouldn't it be a step in the right direction to at least obtain a few properties to start the process?

J Beard so with an 8-9 year cycle and the last down spiral starting in 2008, does that signal we are approaching the peak?

However you would need to prove that you had some kind of unexpected life altering event like a job transfer to another state, etc.

I'm not an experienced investor, but do have some thoughts as we currently live in Muskegon and we are also looking to purchase our first property.

I guess we are all different but my thinking is I would rather have people who I know would possibly be interested and have the funds so I can get the deal completed as fast as possible and within the time limit.

@Harman N. welcome to the forum - I was also at the meet up Thursday and sounds like we are focusing on the same strategy.

We have a website, we are on Google with Adwords, (spent $700 on that last month) we mailed out over 1,500 postcards to vacant houses and houses that are coming up for tax sale, we have an ad on craigslist, and yet no deals. 

We are looking at San Antonio to expand out to.

@Robin Wilk It's hard to pin down an exact number, like how many points your fico drops, maybe just 25-50 points or so from the actual "short sale event".