Good credit scores go a very long way, and to be clear, at one point in my life, my wife and I made $80k combined and qualified for a total of $560k in mortgages across three properties.  

Why not combine kids in groups of 5, and rotate houses and tutoring duties among parents, one each day of the week. 

In CA, lenders regularly budget for 1.25%.With your very healthy cap rate, I'd considering raising CapEx & repair reserves to a combined 8% (roughly 3,300).

I want to combine it and buy a multi family that is income producing.

I usually figure 15% combined for small MFR.

Combining this with low interest rates, I think the housing market will stay hot in SD for the foreseeable future.

A lot of these guys don't qualify for mortgages, at least that's what I'm assuming for the purposes of this question, so they would only get the type of return you can expect from a free and clear property.I know a couple of people in this situation, and it seems that the combination of not being local, and not having access to mortgages makes it difficult to do well investing in real estate, or at least in American real estate.

The higher purchase prices in those towns combined with high leverage will make it difficult.

Or perhaps a small down from me, plus some combination of commercial loan and seller financing.And advice would be appreciated.Thank youMichael

If so, that should compress your Cap Rate, which would be awesome.As far as your analysis:Repairs and CapEx look high at 18% combined.