It will cost you to access/use it.100% equity means you are paying full price for the property.  20% equity means you are buying a property worth 5 times what you are paying for it.As your equity increases from appreciation, it increases 1 dollar for every 1 dollar of appreciation...which means the equity is losing value.If you take all your cash and buy one property all cash, you get one property and one source of CF.If you take the same cash, at 20% DP, you can buy 5 properties...meaning you have a total PV 5 times more than an all cash deal. 

In this part of the cycle, as prices are dropping and it's harder to get financing, a motivated seller is not going to get top dollar, and most want to get rid of their headache.Two years ago, it would have been easier, but not now.

Driving for dollars sounds great but takes a lot of time and hits.

Well, think of the concept of dollar cost averaging in stocks — instead of buying stocks one time, you invest consistently.

Although not required, spending a few hundred dollars can help you discover hidden repair issues.Contingency fundA mortgage lender typically requires you to have significant cash reserves before buying a residential rental property.

I guess it could be the same as someone paying any university 10s, if not 100s, of thousands of dollars to get a degree just to decide they like being a bartender more than some desk job that requires a degree.  

I feel you would be better served by driving for dollars and putting together a small but targeted list of distressed properties that you can skip trace, call or mail the homeowner. 

One lender hit one of my clients that I was doing a JV with... for 800 dollar property tax monitoring fee.. really on a 12 month loan.. but what happens is borrowers just focus on the points with no clue to the junk fee's  or using brokers who add fee's and points on top of the actual lenders fee's again bait and switch.

The 2 times I’ve partnered with people who were not my spouse have cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We invest in top-flight self-storage and mobile home park syndicators and we do months of research before sending them a dollar.