I would travel on the company's dime for work to cool cities/countries, rented a massive fully furnished basement for $400/mo all utilities paid in a beautiful home, and had bought one of my favorite cars (used BMW M3 for under $10k).Since the past 2.5 years I have started investing in real estate, I have improved my income considerably.

When I saw the property I knew it would need considerable work and after running the numbers I knew it was a good deal but I would have to do some of the fixing.  

That's a considerable amount.  

Thanks for sharing Stephen, I am close to the stage where I need to pull the trigger on my first one, I am just putting a few more pieces of the puzzle together.

Thanks, @Neal Collins, you're absolutely right: I'll need to do a lot of homework on the mortgages, taxes, potential fees etc. for any given property.Another big reason I'm doing this is that there are a lot of attractive reasons to go from having an external office for my business (which is currently the case) to having an in-home office that would be tax deductible and essentially give me a discount on my house payment.However, another consideration that I must be careful of is that with seller-financing, a seller can sell the house as-is with possibly a huge number of repairs/some deeply fundamental repair needed.

And it's important to keep in mind that only a max of 75% of the rental income is usually taken into account to offset your income (to take things like vacancy rate, maintenance, etc into consideration).  

There are other considerations such as what to do w/large SD-IRAs where you can't be too active / hands on or you violate IRS rules.  

A lot of the considerations will be dependent on where you are looking and what kinds of properties.

Jason Hirko That's how I plan on approaching it when I pull the trigger on the next property.

I have a couple properties in sight which I am thinking about in Parma but still unsure about pulling the trigger on offers etc. would you be able to spare a few mins to chat with me on phone so I can get some first hand info :)..