hi will.i am a mechanical engineer and do this on the side. i'd never give up my day job. it has great hours (8-5 is not half bad), flexible hours (i can take 2 hr lunch sometimes) and the best of all....i get paid twice a week.what you have going against you is the fact that there are no cheap properties close to where you live. i have it great... cheaper homes and a paying job close to me. i'd have to have 30 houses to even think about leaving work.oh yeah.... and i love the RE stuff more than my job. so, i know what you are going through.

When I wrote this post it was in response to areas such as O.C. where the market for fast deals at cheap prices has pretty much evaporated.

For example, maybe the house is just dirty, and spending $200 for a cleaning crew will be just as effective of a solution than dropping the price $5000.But, of course, once you've exhausted doing all the things that are cheap/easy to change, it then starts to boil down to just price...

Expect to do property reports for dirt cheap and slow pay.

You could get FHA financing which means lower down payment and lower interest rate, and live there with either cheap rent or rent free while you save for your next down payment.

It was extremely cheap, around $30 to do the whole house but took quite a bit of time.Im just curious if anyone else thinks its worth it to change the outlets based on apperance factor alone.

Costco has some nice laminate for cheap occasionally.

These multi-family building are not cheap!

That said, getting a cheap home, fixing it slightly, and then marketing it to Flippers is a strategy I've heard works well in a lot of markets!

Consider higher interest for a lower down payment. 5% interest is dirt cheap money.