No contigencies whatsoever.

I have attended a couple of seminars and read a few books about investing, but I have no experience whatsoever as a investor. the market in Australia is currently in a gigantic bubble where it is a big difficult for investors to enter at this point.

It was like pulling teeth....70%.

It's also possible to send money to the wrong address, or no address whatsoever, and there's nothing you can do to recover it! 

Your tenant has no incentive whatsoever to put a good tenant in there. 

  ( Charleston Market specific)Now I have two big Oregon projects on the books my bankers think like @Chris Seveney we are and they are fine financing for the next 2 build years.. then who knows but we still have not recovered from the last recession we still have a shortage of about 20 thousand new builds that can be absorbed.. so no slow down and you see the market report indicates that and the 3 big Amazon sites that are bringing about 6k workers don't go into service until late fall.. and the 23 homes I am building is 2 miles from there I did not sell one to anyone from Amazon.. sold one on sunday so some one moving in from Vegas.. so still 100 people a day move into the Portland metro and about 50 a day into Charleston those are my two main new build markets.all of my turn key markets are also having record years the appetite for cash flow rentals has never been higher and with financing finally loosened up to where its not like pulling teeth to get a loan its just roared back with no end in site.. at least for my guys and gals.And of course our note business is just steaming ahead at record pace as well as investors at the mom and pop level have learned what turnkey note investing is all about.

If you can't, you need to find a new lender/broker.  ....OR as other posters mentioned, you could get a DSCR loan that isn't going to take into account any personal income whatsoever and is will mainly be based off the subject property's cash flow. 

We can look at a place like Belize which has no zoning or property laws whatsoever.

My plan is to act as General Contractor for my own house and really cut my teeth on the process and get general feel for the process in real time (I imagine there is difference between reading about the steps and process and actually managing a project through each step).Here is my question - how much more comfortable should I be after managing the build of my own house?

I have no experience whatsoever so I’m just trying to learn as much as I can where ever I can.