The renter population remains strong as service jobs allow for easy employment, but poor upside for renters to become owners.  

However, independent of the painful schooling I've had being a long distance landlord (I refuse to hand it over to a prop man co), I've managed to turn the property around, literally doubled the rent from when i bought it, significantly improved the tenant base and have updated, renovated, and flushed out most of the poor workmanship the property has suffered over the years.

I just finished the chapter on using home equity loans or lines of credit. 

@Sam LLoyd the loans I qualified for online with my credit score were around 4.5% some around 5% a couple around 4.3%.

Also, do I do that for all credit cards or just mine and keep my wife’s going for a chance to save her credit score?

Save all of the money you can and then when you turn 18 try to start building your credit.

Listing this as a problem because I don’t want to be over eager and lower my credit score unnecessarily.

Some benefits are that they obviously require a lower down payment, and lower credit scores are permitted, etc.. 

Lowes often puts their flooring on sale, so we saved that way + using a Lowes credit card to save an additional 5%.End results of how the flooring turned out in our unit can be seen in my profile.Best of luck with your reno!

I didn't vet him at all (no credit or background check, etc).