It cleans well and touches up beautifully.

I believe that the natural gas for the hot water heaters and gas ranges are separately metered also.Here is the interesting part: The owner chooses to pay all utilities costing him upwards of $17k annually.

After extensive cleaning and renovations, the property was a beautiful home again.

Originally posted by @Nicholas Andrews:@Jay Hinrichs I guess it’s also important to try and build relationships with people in areas you are investing and have some “boots on the ground” per say. the issue with low value assets in the US  you can have an army full of peeps but if your renter does not pay or trashs your house all your boots are going to do is tell you how much U lost and how much its going to cost to fix.if your out of country.. just look a the median income for any MSA  like Indy is 130k buy at that or a little above that will give you decent schools and decent renters.. there are plenty of 30 to 50k houses there .. just google the Morris invest threads on this site and see how that worked out.. cant caution you enough that low end tenants in the US  are super fragile financially and very transient in nature and the areas these homes are in are crime ridden and terrible schools. why would you invest there. 

It should be a natural progression from conversation to representation.

Waikoloa Village is a beautiful part of the Big Island and we've thought about that area and the Kona area for VRs there.  

I target 12-15% cash-on-cash returns for these properties, given the management-intensive nature of Section 8.  

My calculations were pretty basic.Avg house price $220300Avg house rent $1182 monthly Mtg on $176240 (220300 less 20% down at 3.92% fixed 30 rate) - $833 monthlyAvg appreciation on house 3.9% - $8591So if you subscribe to the 50% rule, $591 monthly would go to expenses, leaving $591 to pay the mtg of $833 resulting in a net outflow of $242 a month or $2904 annually.At this point your only return would be appreciation ($8591) less your net outflow ($2904) totaling $5687 which is 2.58% annual return on $220300.It's possible that you're not taking into account the financed portion or something of that nature...Where $5687 is 13% of your $44060 down payment.

The walls and ceilings will be opened up in plumbing areas, so I am not real concerned about getting into any major surprises.I have done a couple projects of this nature in the past, but did much of the work myself.  

I stand to gain about 30K in equity once it closes after all expenses are added in since it is selling for less due to the short sale nature of it.So part of me wants to sell my existing house down the road which is in an HOA but part of me doesn't want to give up the appreciation gains I could be looking at with the OTHER rental down the street that I have under contract.