The real difference between us is he is more of a phone person than i am due to his past experience working in health insurance for many years and i have been spending most of my week knocking doors in my new farm area for listings and leads. 

If you were in a large market that were/are significantly inflated, then a 20% equity position might still be very risky as prices could drop 50%.As far as tax consequences of paying interest, of course you don't want to spend money on interest simply for the tax deduction.

Putting all our stuff in the garage while we spend the next couple years doing this to avoid capital gains.We're both from California and most familiar with those markets and homes.

If you spend all your time and energy into finding properties that you can sell for ridiculously low prices, you will not need to work on finding buyers/investors.

So when I'm spending my marketing budget(both time and dollars) that is where they go.

I work in Human Resources 9-5 and spend 5-9 on BP.

Appreciation is gambling, but sometime “the house” doesn’t always win.

Do you spend all day obtaining comparative prices?

The town was built in the early 1900's and was a boom town through the 1990's.It is not that the town is lacking small businesses that want or able to lease these spaces, it is that it is a small town, and the businesses cannot spend thousands of dollars on rent, or renovations. 

I've been reading the information in here and finding it very valuable..moreso than spending hundreds of thousands on big name RE seminars.