FinancingTo calculate how much you can afford for a property, the general rule of thumb is 30% of your gross monthly income on home related expenses.

Hoover is expensive.  

The paneling sounds like an expense to me.

If someone struggles with a non-paying renter, they won't come to the "starting out" forum and read a bunch of stories that may not pertain to them.

First property purchase, didn’t want to pay mortgage so decided to house hack.

If you are near break even on the investment, it is still a phenomenal investment, because other people are paying it off.Look at it like your 401K - it isn’t cash flowing either - yet we are dutifully tossing money into it month after month.  

Some people pull all the equity out of their rentals to buy more, others like to pay cash for them, others pay the mortgages down faster because perhaps they want them paid off when they retire, others just let the tenants pay them down over time.

Look for hard Money for %80 of each property, then do a cash out refinance and pay the hard Money Lenders.

What do you like about paying it yourself?

My plan is to make it rentable and really just give him the profit minus vacancy and my expenses from the HELOC I am taking to make the repairs.