Joe and Dave, your posts illustrate what I was talking about re: lack of passivity in real estate.

Many investors who seek advice in this and other forums use a simple calculator to illustrate their potential investment, then post the calculator screen shot on the forum.  

Make sure your investment property supports itself in a way in which it does not matter the external conditions.Here's a dumb analogy that I like to illustrate the situation:The way I see it is if your cow gives you milk every day, you will not care how fat it is, however if you need to slaughter it to eat, you will definitely want it to be fat and that may not be the case.All the best to you!

I share this with you to illustrate that it isn’t difficult to scale in the Triad area (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point) of North Carolina and that you can cash flow even using hard money at 12%.

Below is an article illustrating learning from people smarter than you.http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2015/06/20/5-reasons-joining-mastermind-group/

Not a bankSo for me I'd keep dumping money into it and as for the credit card debt I can understand that it's likely crushing you as far as payments, but have you heard of the Debt Snowball as illustrated by Dave Ramsey?

The location determines all long-term income characteristics, including whether rents will keep pace with inflation and how long the income will last.There is a straightforward process, comparable to peeling an onion, as illustrated below.

The strategy is in the managing rental properties book, used to illustrate a method of getting rid of problem tenants, but the practice can be used in multiple scenarios.

See the illustration below.In a declining market, the current rent actually reflects property prices or 2 to 10 year ago when prices were higher.

The one we use is illustrated below.I will briefly walk through each step, but focus on location selection.LocationLocation is the most important investment decision; it is not the property.