My husband and I own our businesses and are concerned about the debt load. 

My monthly/Yearly Analysis are Gross rent of $5K/60K, Operating expense(details below)$4.7K/55.9K, net cashflow is $0.338K/4K of 7% operating marginNOI( excl P&I payment ) is 35K/yr with a Cap Rate of 5.83%.

That takes a huge load off the monthly cost even if it means superhuman willpower to fix the place up with a new baby.

A higher cap rate means more cash flow (specifically net operating income) for a given price.

Having a great property manager and or owner operator that provide good value to residents is the best way to have a successful rental business. 

I could help walk people through evaluating multi-family investments and/or operating a multi-family investment as an owner/manager.  

Some of the cost that you might be able to write off would be your operational cost for your partnership (LLC) that is not related to renovating the houses.

The environmental controls are very tight and underground storage tank (UST) operators are held to strict standards for regular inspections and monitoring. 

Often times business partners skimp on their operating agreement and may not even consult an attorney, then when things go awry it costs ten times more (and can drag out for years) to resolve.

High rental demand in a market means if your property manager sucks at marketing units or has operational inefficiencies, units are still going to fill due to higher tenant need.