It's totally false that you need 2 to 3 credit cards and lots of debt and pay it down each month, I've found a way to keep it minimal and still have very high credit scores.

@Joe KatoThe goal of being a landlord is to get the rent paid on time every month and to minimize maintenance and capital expenditure (capex) fixing the units back up.

I agree - $250k is very minimal for retirement.

Hello everyone.I stumbled upon BiggerPockets a couple weeks ago while searching for sites with information on multi-family purchases, and have been reading forums and listening to podcasts since, now finally (better late than never) introducing myself.I guess I have been involved with real estate (minimally) the last four years when purchasing my own home in Bakersfield, but then chose to rent it out and move to Ventura in order to be closer to the beach.

If you have a property cash flowing ~$400 with minimal rehab, you have a very marketable property to a buy/hold investor, the fact that it is fully leased would make it an even easier sell...

- he's done minimal work right now.

It also helps save money and in your first deal or so, that is often very important and necessary.Now, as an investor becomes seasoned, part of that is the ability to build systems and not do the manual labor (or at least minimize it to very small functions).

After doing some research I contacted her (friend/agent) the next day, and true enough the property was listed for 109 days with minimal offers.

For me this increases the likelyhood of positive cash flow and also minimizes the risk of having to carry the whole mortgage yourself because there are (or would be) two tenants sharing that cost.

Not exactly helpful to your question, but not a bad side business for him with minimal effort.