One of the things we invest in are tax liens, we will have 500-750 at any given time, most are quite affordable and percentage-wise, we are now ending up with approx 10-15% of them maturing to us each year. 

I have an excellent day job that will afford me time to research and find properties (online) but i do not have any money for a down payment right now and am trying to dig out of CC debt right now that was necessary for me to buy my own new house and move.I gave my other house to my wife, we are amicable.

As far as the FSBO I subscribe to a service called beenverified . com to find current address, emails and phone numbers of people 

But for the average Joe, we aren’t set to inherit tons of money from our family, we tried the stock market but we’ve ended up with average 7-8% returns, maybe some of us have great ideas, but we don’t have the connections and/or the network to adequately fund our business ventures.Raising money to purchase a home is relatively easy for the vast majority of people and in some cases can be shockingly affordable.

I also look at straight ROI - as this includes debt servicing whereas the Cap Rate does not.  

The use of direct mail advertisements cal also help you if you can afford to send out hand-written post cards that are over-sized to grab their attention.  

The gal wants to stay on, and apparently can afford to.

I'm currently still active duty military, and my goal is to get my real estate business firmly established in the next four year so that when I get out of the service I don't have to apply for jobs unless I really want to (probably not).

It is another term for the Cash on Cash ROI on an all cash deal.The $12,000 NOI is not the return, it is the cash flow produced by the asset before debt service.

Years ago I had a tenant sign a lease but ask if he could hold off paying the security deposit/rent until the 1st of the month when he formally moved down here (he was visiting his daughter at the time) and received his disability check.This guy was an older, 100 percent service connected veteran.