Plus if you are just starting out, your time is essentially worthless, meaning you can spend a lot of time working on your home and it not eat into your return as much hiring a contractor for thousands.

Ideally, we would like to buy multiple properties, but with a 20-25% down payment, this eats up most of that capital.

This is an insightful question I haven’t managed to consciously articulate yet.

This 8% to 10% eats up the entire margin that small time landlord(2 properties) like me make from the rental.

You’re right this isn’t a killer deal being Reno,taxes, closing and purchase will eat away the profits but the equity and cash flow for long term is what drives me to go for this deal. 

You should do a bit on analysis on the workings and point of any marketing system you use.Example.. your question: How many times does one call...Well to asnwer this not based on mere opinion, but on logic, commonsense, data, numbers and evidence...How would you react if a Prok BBQ place called you when you don't eat meat, to try to get you to try their latest special called "Baby pig ripped from the mother, slaughtered infront of the mother and served on a juicy bun"?

(I think) I vaguely remember something being said that if you make a purchase with your interest rate higher than the cap rate it will eat most if not all of the profit.

If you'd like to explore STR, you can purchase one of them under second home loan for 10% down which reduces the cost of the downpayment so it eats less into your $500k liquid cash.

Property Taxes are a killer in NJ, they definitely eat up a lot of cashflow.

.- Quit drinking or going out to eat till debts are paid down.