Be conservative when you run your numbers on rents with prices/interest rates.

I was thinking of doing rental properties near college towns as I think the income would be steady and minimal risk.What sort of capital is needed to get multifamily properties in B rated areas?

The most obvious is that you will be able to offset your mortgage with renting out a few rooms.

You can also ask for a 'Seller Credit" which helps cover closing costs or buy the rate down if you come in high enough on the purchase offer.

What appx rates would I be looking at for each and what are the pro-con's here?

@Jake Posnerstrongly recommend looking closer to home - OOS investing is more difficult than it's made out to be. andwith rates where they are, there's just about no cash flow right now unless you employ a creative strategy or a combination of creative strategies.if you just buy any old property in any old market, you're not going to cash flow.

It is really important for us to keep the units booked to cover the monthly overhead (higher monthly rates to cover the 4th unit not being rented). 

2) What their tenant retention % is for like properties. 3) Rates, whats it going to cost.

was thinking of letting them know I leg rent more than a certain amount here in California unless that person decided to move out and one of their other not on the contract tenants signed a new lease at the higher rate?  

I'm sure that is true, because most mortgage companies aren't going to go searching for issues when there aren't problems - but in the truest sense of the word this is loan fraud and I'm just not up for it in my portfolio.I did hear from a friend of a friend type that she was able to close a subto with a small local bank somewhere in Georgia (property was also located there) because of a long standing relationship with the bank.