I own a vacation rental in central FL in a large retirement community and in the summer I advertise it for hundreds less than my carrying costs. 

Property management in NJ has to be carried out under a licensed broker.

Negotiate Seller Concessions or Carryback FinancingIf the seller is motivated (property has been sitting 4+ months), explore seller carryback for some or all of the gap.Example: Seller carries a $40K second at low interest (or even interest-only), allowing you to minimize the size of any outside second loan Seller carrybacks don’t count toward your DTI and can be creatively structured.2.

Most lenders shy away from funding land prep and infrastructure—soft costs like grading, roads, and utilities—because they’re hard to collateralize and carry a lot of risk without vertical improvements in place.In a similar deal, I partnered with another investor here on BiggerPockets to finance a similar project which also had an end buyer in hand, but the cost of capital was high as it was north of 25% annually to the borrower.

Have you figured the cost of carrying the property while renovating?

@Carrie Matuga this is a great post!!

The term INVESTOR means absolutely nothing if not carrying a negative connotation in our market right now.

As you embark on building and expanding your real estate portfolio, one of the most important steps you can take is establishing a strong, proactive asset protection strategy.Real estate investing offers great potential, but it also carries inherent risks, from lawsuits and liability claims to unforeseen creditor issues.

•get as much education about this house hacking as much as possible & focus on it- you can get carried away with all the other stuff out there. 

I have automated newsletters where I give tenants seasonal email reminders with short how-to videos, I carry home warranties, everything is online eforms: lease/addenda e-signatures, condition reports inspections where tenants upload pictures and they automatically get save to the cloud, pre-leasing app so I don't have no-shows, I even have SOPs where I hire out my showings and it explains everything they have to do step by step, etc.