On the NW side like Montclare, fine, that's a low end price, but not on the west and sw sides. 

At What Rental Amount is it Too Much Work to Manage?

.), were slow and grudging to respond to maintenance requests, and one really memorable lady who used me as her personal ATM because she didn't want to get a job of her own.

The place is a dump with very low quality tenants.  

Anyway, I'm just checking the other houses in the area to see how much they've sold for and low and behold the city owns 9 of the 14 houses and 2 empty lots in one block!  

However, I hear all the time that interest rates are so low that it's worth it to finance real estate with debt if possible.

I want to be able to carve my own path and not be worried about people telling me "if you're not in your career by 35 you'll be doomed to low-paying jobs." 

I was hoping I'd find support for whether or not it would be a good idea to get hard money for a 25% down payment, traditional financing for the remaining 75%, with all profits (rent less both loan payments-HML and traditional financing, prop tax, insurance, and 10% maintenance fund) going to the hard money lender under the loan is paid off. 

My idea of getting into real estate investing was coming up with 20% of your own money (that's 60k where I live for a low end property), traditional residential mortgage, net maybe $200 a month if I was lucky and repeat the process when I came up with another 20% until I had maybe 40 properties.

The expense includes taxes ($12K), sewage, water, and other various maintenance items.