But I have a client with the same type of building and has a non-conforming basement that he uses as an Airbnb and hasn't had any issues with it. 

What type of equity raise?

Operating in the price ranges you are - what my investors do is buy 2-3 at a time, renovate them as you have mentioned and then refinance them all together into a portfolio loan to get around the minimum loan amount problem that can be sometimes an issue in these types of markets. 

If not, there are a few options of doing something like this, but it depends on the type of property, and properties, that you are dealing with. 

And if your're holding, it depends what type of rental it will be. 

However, being the market is the way it is in Denver, I rarely see "We Buy Houses" type of signs, so just wondering if wholesaling is dead in Colorado because prices are so high? 

If a parcel was owned by a company that manufactured anything, especially metal things or used chemicals, you can bet there is some level of contamination. 

The reason I mentioned getting a real estate license is I thought I needed that or some type of real estate background to get my DRE MLO license in California.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We ran numbers across several probabilities and it seemed like a safer bet when we purchased.