I have done plenty well following some basic real estate investing guidelinesIt's too long to repost how I do that so I'll put it here: It's about the 6th post downhttps://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311-buying-se...I take the Balou approach from the original Disney movie "Jungle book" "if you act like that bee acts, uuh, uuh, you're working too hard".Set up your Systems & Procedures, Analyze your market, put together a marketing plan, work your market, close the business and Repeat

Find out what a lender erquires, then you have a goal to work towards, though I think you'll be surprised how the lending system is designed to help you, not roadblock you.

Unlike leads you can order online from a generic website, I can guarantee that the leads I pull are fresh (60 days or less), off market, and I use a ranking system to determine which sellers are most motivated based off of factors such as the executor of the property living in a different state and the amount of siblings the house has been inherited by.

Being a long distance land lord is all about setting up systems, creating a network and having good people available to you. 

Another thing I use to do before this book when I was getting started was to walk through Home Depot/Lowes and get familiar with average costs for big repair items like water tanks, HVAC, appliances, kitchen/bathroom cabinets, flooring etc.

The challenge with such a low rent is, that even taking 10% of rents for maintenance & capex, you can still find yourself under water. 

I am not sure but I think this is a CYA thing that if the person doing the BPO sees any exposed wood or sees any water damage they have to note it which makes the home uninsurable by FHA

I am testing the waters of commercial real estate and was wondering if anyone could look over the numbers I currently have available.

And with a good tenant buyer that is willing to pay in a little extra per month toward the down payment, you can get them to work... and ultimately collect your profit on the backend, or on the second and third lease option tenants if that plays out.The clear advantage of going this way is... if you dont find a "GOOD" lease option buyer, you are not obligated to the sellers... just let the bank take it like they were going to anyway.Pre-foreclosure lists are easy to find, and because getting a short sale completed is a numbers game there are often many sellers in that niche that could not get the short sale done, and are going to walk... you can cut your teeth on those until you get your system fine tuned.On a side note... the other way to go is to get a mailing list of absentee owners from your county tax rolls, or realquest.com.

A Mainframe Systems Programmer for the past 11 Years and a real estate, Stocks/Bonds beginner investor for the past 1 1/2 Years, I have invested in NONE!