Anybody have any other suggestions to get 0 or low percent down financing??

The 50 percent rule does account for the mortgage payment. 50 percent of the rent goes to expenses including taxes and insurance.

A few of these properties have been in the same hands for forty or fifty years, and don't appear to have been updated or maintained in all that time.

If you don't put 20% down on a FHA loan, you will pay an additional 1.15 percent (or something close to that) for PMI for the first 5 years minimum and until there is at least 20 percent equity or loan paydown.

With the rental income from the existing rental, I will be just under 48 percent DTI counting the existing mortgage and the projected mortgage against my expenses.

Because the US dollar is nothing but a big fat IOU from what is always touted as the strongest, "flush with cash and opportunity" country on the planet, we as Americans continue to go on with our lives investing in the same asset class (equities) and continue doing what we always did because we are satisfied getting what we've always gotten and frankly we are brainwashed and programmed to believe if we continue to invest in American companies, we will continue a 8-9 percent year over year return.

"The old hindsight's 20-20 deal" might be true, but so are cash-out refi's, where you could leverage those properties, especially the owner-occupied one, for most likely the best rates you'll see in your lifetime over the next few years.

Maybe start at 5 percent and go up 1 percent per year until you hit 9.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/04/14/the-2-percent-rule/http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/03/30/battle-of-the-cap-rates/

No sense in paying that down extra when you can get properties throwing off way more than the 3 to 4 percent you are paying on your home each month.