You will need to be able to afford to supplement your tenants rent long term.

I would like this investment to supplement my current income, and over 10 years build a sizable real estate portfolio that will allow me to leave corporate America and spend 100% of my time focusing on growing my units.

We have never bought a home before, but we thought it would be a smart move to buy a cheaper home (170K) in Austin, TX, instead of renting all the time we are saving up to buy a 300K home.So what I'm trying to figure out is, if it would be smartest to rent for 5 years (and through money out of the window), or buy enable to potentially avoid to loose money to a renter while paying off school loans and save for downpayment.

I generally use the 50% guideline but not as a hard and fast rule per se.It depends on the potential of the property to perform over time, which enables me to overlook this initial 50% rule stress test as a limiting factor to my purchase.

And if you are trying to supplement your income with rental property, its gonna take a few units to make much difference.

I am landlord to all my properties which enables me to to provide a premium service to obtain higher quality long term tenants.

The small commercial sites are getting snapped up.The passage of this long-planned high-density enabling bill was expected by everyone on the supporting side in early 2015, but in December after numerous delays, the council kicked it back down to the Planning level over a very thin reason that has now been addressed in some 2016 legislation.

This would just be a supplement to those funds for a project. 

Technology advancements such as email, phone calls, skype has enabled communication with a remote CPA to be seamless.

Can someone give an example of what the math looks like that enables you to refi and pull money back out after you have bought the property and rehabbed?