I've done it and thousands of others have done it.A mobile home is just inexpensive to obtain and can get better returns than stick built, in many cases.

I will be a happy man if you negotiate this down :) Finally I have $100 per month (average) in expenses for monthly salt water treatment of the well and pumping out septic every 3 years.

 $1500/mo rental = $18000 before expenses/ $100,000 cash in, is 18%, if you assume 50% in expenses then you are looking at 9% ROI all cash.  

It would be nice if someone wrote nice articles about landlords...but instead we are all a@@holes.Like the Lawyer in article who made himself a lawyer, I "Made myself a landlord"...by saving all my money, driving a junky car, having a room mates, not buying a big expensive truck, not going on nice vacations, and eventually having enough to buy a place of my own in expensive So.

You can get parts fairly inexpensively from supplyhouse.com, and there are plenty of videos on youtube about repairing radiator systems if you're interested in doing it yourself. 

These are the properties that 1) are inexpensive and

the heloc financing is relatively inexpensive.  

@Adam Christopher, you definitely have enough equity in your houses and with your cash to make the move to apartment building ownership, though probably not in expensive Hawaii. 

Cheap is rarely inexpensive.

I expect slight increases in expenses over the years, but this double hit, taxes and insurance up so much in one year, with market rents not growing fast enough to cover is eating into our cash flow.