I tend to be on the conservative side with such things, but I've been through a few layoffs and one really bad tenant eviction experience.Congrats on the diploma and on wanting to take action!  

Also, they tend to have better pricing and still be fairly negotiable. 

Accountants tend to be conservative.

Lots of investors here will go the maximum number (6 Freddie Mac, 10 Fannie Mae) of conventional loans as they tend to be cheaper than other loans.

In hot markets, everyone is pro leverage and I tend to play it conservative.

Finally, lenders tend to be a bit wary of properties that have a "concentration" of any particular group such as student, section 8, military, etc. 

The teenager ones, while they have the money and are usually quiet tend to be clueless about some of the basics of life.

Big tools (Like air scrubbers, concrete mixers, scaffolding) are a little bit harder to misplace and tend to stay until they get moved to the next job... unless we're in a bad neighborhood, in which case we aren't working there anyway!

I do agree that an in-house maintenance crew makes getting small repairs done quickly, however, we have also found the repairs tend to be of a poor quality or lazy choices are made... especially when they know you can't easily come and check up on them.

South NJ also has good areas and the property values tend to be lower, so your $100k would probably get you more options.