If you do this near a university or college, you can rent to leftists and get them to pay off the house with their student loan money. They typically rent all of the local units each fall, and stay through the spring. Every summer you do the maintenance. Rinse and repeat. You can use the equity in the first house to purchase additional rental units. You are now a mini Trump. Some people do this via Air B&B. I know a guy who did this with about twenty welfare houses in the worst part of town. He purchased the first for almost nothing during a deep recession. He rented rooms to city welfare directly, conditional that they pay him rent directly (because druggies can't pay their rent on time.) Welfare assigned the tenants. He simply repainted the unit each time someone moved out, patched whatever holes, etc, (welfare inspected the units for cleanliness and safety each time.) He kept the basic home functional, and otherwise spent very little except property taxes. After some 20 years of this, he sold the lot of it during a market boom, paid his capital gains taxes, retired, and bought a huge house on the hill for his family, no mortgage needed. When his kids got married, they held the weddings in his backyard. He is still there today. It is a viable way.