I am just vary excited to be getting started and want to minimize my mistakes as much as possible.

Luckily, we have a great lender and attorney who will be charging us minimal fees to make this happen.

You can still get a sense of how the property will perform year-to-year and whether it looks like the proceeds from the eventual resale will justify holding the property with what may be a minimal cash flow.

Their risk, OTOH, is minimal.

So I firmly believe that was a step in the right direction.Meanwhile, my girlfriend of three and a half years and I went to a rich dad free seminar down at the country club, and two things happened: she started to see where investing and 'financial intelligence' could take us, and I got fired up again about real estate investing (from two angles this time).Our current situation is as follows:Me:Almost zero cash and minimal credit available at this pointSOME stuff in collections from when I was in school, medical stuffsomewhere around 20,000 in school loans10,000 in credit card debt, plus another 5000 for my Jeep.Her:about 5000 in savings for a rainy dayprobably around 20,000 in available credit if she asked for itJUST(October) purchased the home we live in, so a new mortgage of 150,000That's about it.Right now I'm hurting for the winter, as I'm pretty new in the real estate business, and she's doing okay.

Normally rent variation based on start time of lease is minimal; I might give a lower rent to fill vacancy in winter for example, but otherwise i try to get a fari market rent (not always max market rent).But since you know when the hot season is, you want to time your lease renewal in that area to be during that hot time of the year, so you might end up with a lease for some number of months that isn't a multiple of 12 to do that.

Nothing profound, but key is to minimize outflows and maximize income.

If you have good tenants, the demands on your time should be minimal and it will put an additional $150 per month in your pocket.

Lethargic activity=minimal appreciation.

Another thing you can do to minimize your time involved is take out stuff that breaks down....garbage disposals, ceiling fans, etc and have them supply the washer and dryer.