I intend to purchase more properties within the next year to establish my portfolio and then to continue to add to it over time.

hi sawyer. you are in a tough spot with the little money down. deals are out there, but with that little down, the deals will be few. let me give you a couple of ideas. first, lets state that the saying " it takes money to make money" is very true. you need money. if you don't have much cash yourself, then you need to use OPM, other peoples money. this usually requires a bank and a loan. take that $500 and put it into an account. after a month, go to that bank and ask for a $500 loan, and use the account as collateral. take the borrowed $500 and start an account with another bank. repeat the process as often as you can. at some point, use the last $500 to pay off the first $500 loan, and repeat that process. the reason being is because you are establishing good credit with several banks. pretty soon, you will be able to borrow money from these banks in larger amounts and with no collateral, thus resulting in using other peoples money. 2nd idea: a few years ago, the feds put a limit on the number of foreclosed houses banks could put back out onto the market. they did this because the flood of foreclosed houses was killing the housing market. so the bank was left with a lot of houses they literally could not put back on the market. so, they had to decide if the cost of being forced to hold onto some of the houses for an indefinite period of time was worth it or not. the ones that were not worth it, they just "dropped" off their books. they do this by just filing a " release of lien" or a " release of mortgage" with the county register of deeds. this does 2 things. one, the bank no longer has any claim to the house, and therefore, no liability either. and it also puts the ownership of that house back into the hands of the previous owner. most of these owners do not know this happened because the letter the bank sends out to them goes to the last known address the bank has for them, which is often the house that was foreclosed on, and the owner no longer lives there. you have to find the owner and by the house from them. most often, they do not want it anymore. you may be able to get these places for your $500. beware, quite often these houses have years of back taxes owed on them so do your research. ask the tax authority if you can make a payment agreement with them on the house BEFORE you buy it from the owner. use the back taxes issue as a ploy to get the owner to sell the house to you cheap. this takes time to find a house like this. i have been doing real estate investing for many years now and i have only bought 2 houses this way, but its worth the shot. i bought one like this for $2000 on a tuesday and sold it on thursday for $10,000. good luck to you.

So I am here to really begin the process with learning everything there is to know about real estate, starting a business, establishing my condo as a rental, etc.I'm excited to be apart of this community and I hope I get to meet a lot of like minded people!

And in general, it a challenge to get someone to pull over on the side of the road to your establishment unless you are a national brand. 

I am re-establishing  myself in real estate and I am looking to network and hopefully build some lasting relationships.

Cracks can become established from settling which is normal for older houses.  

I have a few contractors that I would like to establish a working relationship with and had them do some bids for the roof and a fence.  

I checked it out last night and found an REIA monthly meeting for my area that's well established and has a strong community of investors and real estate professionals....and of course frequent BP!

Her partner is already established. 

If you can achieve higher than average returns on the reserve investment you can even reduce the annual amount invested a bit as the return will partially offset the annual amount needed.If you have multiple properties and are still funding up the reserve account amounts, you an borrow a bit from one property to cover costs for another but this approach comes with risks as well.Other ways to off set these costs are to establish lines of credit in advance of needing the money to fund the replacements or borrow against the property(ies) to fund the cap ex, but there is the additional interest expense to consider.Hope this helps.