Buy a property worth at least a million, better a few million, to make it worthwhile.  

I do rehabs in San Diego where my purchase price is usually from 900k to 1.3 million and I try to make 20% of the purchase price per deal and try to do 5-6 deals per year (if I can find them which is becoming harder).

The town owns the lake, so they get a little more leeway there and people who own $4 million homes don't want to see mud flats, so the lake stays full most of the time. 

You can get a million more applications on Monday morning, it's irrelevant if the applications aren't qualified. 

You could also look for a small multi family for 1 million and have the 275K (down payment) for that duplex or fourplex. 

I have over 5 million in rentals and have a limited emergency fund.

I like Bhargav's suggestion, maybe using a combination of leverage and cash if you have $1 million. 

I'd expect Cleveland to fetch a bit more even with more saturation.

I researched all these different corporate structures very in depth when i was starting and now that I look back, I wasted a lot of time trying to "protect" myself from the 1 in a million things instead of just focusing on the main goal of acquiring and operating RE assets.

For argument's sake, and to keep the math simple, let's say you have $1 Million in ETF's or some other safe-ish, well-diversified assets.Step 1:  Take out an SBLOC (Security backed line of credit) on said portfolio.