Worst case, we wait too long, it forcloses, screws the homeowner who has serious health problems, loses the bank money, and keeps us out of a house that would work well for our family.

Buy at big discounts and put down health down payments to get it to cash flow3.

RE money has highs and lows, when you couple it with now having a company sponsored health plan, I am in far better shape doing both...If/when my Real Estate activities make me 3 times what my JOB does in consistent income, I may consider quitting.

In some cities check to see if there Health Department work orders.

Possibly health dept. regulations.

But your occupancy limit must be clearly tied to health and safety or other legitimate business needs.

Any repair that affects the usefulness of the property, health, safety, welfare, etc gets same day attention.

@Nichole Wall Work with your contractor to partition the list of renovation items into categories based on priority: "critical" (health & safety of tenants, integrity of building, rely upon it); "high" (will allow you to increase revenue, obvious short term payback); and "should happen" (all those things you really should do, but that have not immediate benefit and could wait until you are doing something from one of the other two categories).  

If that is limited they will look more to your health with equity and net worth and liquidity to offset lack of experience.It's great if you have all three.

Seems like who can boast the most about their Midwest location...LOL6 professional sports teams, regional health care center in a 4 state area, federal reserve is up in KC, more shore line on lakes than the Pacific coast in Cali, oh, and I live in the area, LOLHere's an odd stat, most who moved out of MO a few years ago moved to Cali and then, most who moved out of CA moved to MO, guess they decided to come back.....actually not, more moved out of CA and came to MO.Center of the US population is about 50 miles east of me.To housing, it's pretty affordable, tons of 3/2s 90 to 120K, but you can certainly go up, one of (or the) largest home owner occupied is about 10 miles south of me, some tech billionaire building a rock castle.Look for a diversified economy, health, education, manufacturing, tech, financial services and retail to drive your economy, pretty well in that order and growing here.I also think we'll see much smaller less expensive homes built in the future especially in more rural areas, post WWII tract houses, 1,000 - 1,200 sq ft.