You can bet the free stuff just leads to the stuff to buy so you get all the secrets.The payment of money, regardless of what you might like to call it, or anything of value that might be exchanged with any promise or agreement to grant title to any kind of asset IS a financing arrangement.

I would calculate that figure and use in my comparison as well.

That DTI is the number that has to be 35% or better (some banks I think might go higher).And just to clarify further, your debt payments that are used for that calculation would actually include your student loan payments, house payment, car loans, credit card payment, etc.So all of that totaled up would be matched up against your gross monthly income to calc your dti.

But I guess I should calculate the worst case scenario with eviction costs and no payments for several months?

You can still buy if you don't have the experience, but the PITI of the loan will likely have to be reflected as an obligation in your ratio, and this can ratchet up your ratio pretty quickly.But once you have the two years experience, the lender will instead calculate "net cash flow" on the property.

That just seems like a lot of flexibility (and potential return) to give up for about an 0.5% difference in interest rate.Regarding mortgage calculators.

I haven't done much research on this but I bet its 2 fold.

Then I have had smaller apt buildings for example one I did 12 units bought at 184k sold 7 months later for 257k;) Brian B has a big business and certainly sounds like the most active guy I see in this forum I bet he could entertain us with some great deals he has done.

This was covered the other day:http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/83731I bet this guy's other tenants have all paid their March rent early and most have probably paid April.

Your rental would still cash flow and the savings on the interest can easily be calculated.