Most people start investing in real estate to earn "passive income". The idea is simple: buy a home, rent it out, collect checks in your mailbox each month. Boom! Passive income! That's one of the reasons I invested in real estate in the first place. However, this isn't completely true for the DIYer. Here's how my first month went as a landlord.... We bought a property that needed some serious TLC. Since we were just getting started, we couldn't afford to hire someone else to make the repa...