how are people able to get deals with little to no money down?

[Aj Oxley]

My wife and I are Looking to buy either a 4-plex here in Baton Rouge, La where 3 of the units is rented out and the other unit needs a complete rehab for $250K. The local bank here says don’t buy/look at any properties that will not generate income upon signing because that mean we will be paying on something out of pocket before the property can make money. 

The other is in Tennessee for $860k the seller of this 1 bought it then fixed it up a bit in Jan of this year and now wants to sell it. The bad thing is he has no lease agreements in place even though he has it 100% occupied with the tenants paying month to month. The local bank in TN don’t want to lend because he can’t provide a rent roll to see the numbers to make sense of the deal. 

My question is how are people able to get deals with little to no money down if this is their first time buying in real estate with all of the many people on this site including the Host saying it’s possible but the lenders are saying that, that is untrue it will take some amount of money down. We have $30K in cash on hand to start this train rolling, it may not be a lot to some but we’ve been saving up several months to get to this amount with all of our normal expenses with our current living situation. I’m not sure if I’m taking on something to big to soon or have false expectations about the whole little to no money down lingo Not saying I don’t believe David, Brandon, Rob nor any of the other people on here, we are at a stand still because its unclear what I’m not understanding what routes to pursue. I guess what I’m getting at or saying is who did their funding so I can link up with them…?!?