You can always learn from The School of Hard Knocks, of course.

One time, I had a landlord install a fan in my room in grad school b/c the room got really hot and other tenants did not like to run the A/C for whatever reason.

When I was in school, I negotiated a couple of those, although I closed on another kind.

When I decided to move to New York for graduate school in 2015, I pulled some of my equity to pay for my tuition and living expenses.

This is also not the ideal option because you'll be spending so much on rent in the interim while waiting for your rehabilitations to be done.Few thoughts to leave you with: 1) Will your kids ever need money for schooling/life expenses? 

The barriers to entry for being an attorney are quite high (undergraduate degree, LSAT entrance exam, admission to law school, successful completion of law school, pass the bar exam, undergo fitness of character investigation).  

And good schools and infrastructure.The southeast side is cheapest, but riskier tenants, but you have a lot of long term stable jobs there like the Nissan plant, wear housing, amazon, airport workers.That's just my personal strategy's.  

I will say that if you have kids or are looking to do family planning you may want to research PG county school systems prior to making your decision

Rents are really good, and vacancy is usually never a problem, especially if you buy in areas where there are very good elementary schools.

If he was your best friend from middle school, maybe he can say it the way he said it, but as a licensed Realtor who should respect everyone they work with, it's absolutely unacceptable.