If you can afford it just take your time to start investing because most markets are low in inventory and prices tend to be high.Just do what is average in that neighberhood that you select.  

A vacant house, via Chris Clothier find motivated sellers now, recently was upgraded so you can filter on high equity or low equity AND older than 50 yr old.  

I am interested in buying it at low cost to fix it up.

My backgrounds are in economics, accounting (CPA candidate), product design, & engineering — I know, quite a lot but I’m a lifelong learner.

Good credit, especially when you can go OO and take advantage of the extremely low interest rates will be HUGE.#2 - A strong W2.

So 80% is on the low side. $400 to renew an existing tenant seems pretty high to me.

The economy is stagnant, and support stuff such as property management and handyman are not readily available on top of low quality tenants that comes with high churn.

I have $40k in savings and very low living expenses.

Many products require cash reserves of 6 months of payments.Like everybody else is saying, talk to several lenders before closing so you know how the refi will look and structure it correctly on the initial purchase.  

If someone offers 100% financing in the debt area (esp at a low rate) and esp if newbies are welcome its probable something is wrong.