$175,000 settlement.... now what?
I'm new here and this is my first post, so I'm sure I'm asking something that has been covered over and over, but here goes. Long story short I just reached a settlement agreement with the VA and I'd like to invest some portion of this into owning rental property. I have a general idea of what I'd like to do, but I'm not willing to press on until I understand all the various aspects and have some insight from others with experience.
My long term goal is to buy and hold rental property to create additional sources of income. I'd like to steadily increase the number of properties I own, but I do not have a defined pace at which I'd like to proceed.
I live in Louisville, KY and my idea is to purchase 2-3 homes, each around the 35k-40k range and in need of no more than 15k in repairs/improvements per property. I would like to make the homes approved for section 8, largely because reliability the gov portion of the rent being paid on time and the high demand of programs such as these. I estimate that I could net $900 per property per month.
My thoughts were to finance 70% on each home for 15 year fixed. I'm not sure if it's better to buy the houses with cash and finance them after the repairs or the other way around or even where/how to go about finding these specific types of properties in general. Any insight, ideas, and/or guidance would be appreciated.