You have a void period with no income coming in, you have advertising and other costs to find a replacement tenant, they may not be as responsible as this guy, etc.

Your property taxes, insurance, maintenance, vacancy, legal fees, repairs, advertising, etc etc etc.The 2% rule is an evaluation tool.

I'm going to be looking for "we buy houses" advertisements on bandit signs, craigslist, the Yellow Pages, and the news paper.

I'm thinking of moving to all electronic PDFs, but the size of the scanned stuff can get pretty large - and the hard copy is useful anywhere in the house, not just wherever a computer is.I don't go to the extreme of photographing every step in the contruction process.

I also did this with a 15yr loan because I am looking for buy and hold rentals and from what I have read, 15yr loans workout better for this if I can get a deal with positive cash flow.Purchase price: $70,000Down Payment: $14,000/20%Mortgage payments: $6,188.76/yr (PI $515.76/month @ 5% 15 yr)Rental Income: $15,600/yrVacancy 9%: $1,404Property Tax: $2,424/yrInsurance: $600/yrProperty Manager 12%: $1,872/yrMaintenance: $1,800/yr ($150/door per month, 100 for the 3br and 50 for the 1br)Utilities: $300/yr water (I guessed again)Advertising: $200/yr (the guy that made this had this in here; I figured PM took care of this?)

We execute a "Utilities Budget Agreement" as an addendum to the lease, which works are follows:1) We identify all the utilities (hydro, gas, water/sewer, cable, etc) and services (snow removal) which are to be governed under the agreement and set an amount which will be paid, in advance, into the budget fund each month by the tenant;2) When the utility bills arrive, we pay them and forward an electronic copy to the tenant so they are aware of their resource consumption.3) Every three months (quarterly) we reconcile the amount paid into the utilities budget against the utilities bills incurred.  

I have a diverse background in marketing and advertising which I know will definitely help my success in real estate.

I want to advertise property for rent and  sales in google earth . 

You can't advertise a meetup on BP unless your a Plus or Pro member, so keep that in mind.BP basically helped us connect with other investors in the area.

They do however give financing like advertised...kind of.