leveraging question

[Paul M.]

When people suggest leveraging is a better investment strategy as opposed to using straight cash is there a written rule of thumb that you invest in single family or multi's under 5 units? Where I live there is money in holding class d properties. If you go above 5 units however there's an asbestos inspection fee for around 4k that most local lenders require and from what I understand if the report comes back positive the asbestos has to be removed or no approval. Tack on the closing costs and realtor fee, basically every transaction you do is going to run you 6-10k for anything 5 units or more. That makes sense to me when considering the larger 25 units+ but to those who insist on leveraging and doing deal after deal how do you get around this or do you just strictly invest in 4 units/below?