@Justin GoodinI just read and posted a question on another post literally minutes ago. 

Quite literally, if the rental income is equal to or greater than the PITI, it'll qualify (with some exceptions of course). 75% LTV is typical, but I have worked with lenders willing to do 80%.

When I bought my first property, prices were literally half what they are today, and I thought the same things you are thinking today, that it is so expensive. 

If you can't fly out here and literally drive the blocks I wouldn't take the risk!

Unfortunately there is literally no street parking in the area and the vacant land next door and corner store are not willing to lease or sell parking spots. 

My bare minimum fee just to keep my license is 150/month to my firm, and that's literally just to be alive. 

The way I would prevent that is by having a partner on the phone checking the records while I'm literally sitting at the auction to avoid that slippage. 

so most people will have to be as leveraged as possible to scale (at the beginning). as in, keep your LTV high and focus on buying 'as much' ($$) RE as possible. this is if you're doing a pretty run of the mill REI strategy like buy and hold. i came across an interesting guideline once: if you could sell today and net 7x+ your annual true net cashflow, you should cash-out/refi, or sell/1031. think of it this way: if your portfolio in a year is worth 1m market value, and you owe 600k, and have a lender that will do a portfolio loan at 80% ltv, you could cashout refi and get 200k to play with (minus closing costs). when you compare the now-lower cashflow from the existing portfolio (higher LTV & maybe different rate), to what you can do with 200k cash, THAT'S where it gets fun. maybe you lose 1k/mo in cashflow on the original portfolio (literally just made up a number, idk), but you can gain 2500/mo in cashflow with that 200k.. then doing the cashout/refi earned you a net increase in your monthly profit of 1500/mo, plus you're getting debt paydown and appreciation on "more" real estate, probably getting bigger tax benefits, etc.

Now that property has almost doubled in value and can rent for 150% more then it was renting at the time i purchased 😫When I told that story to a RE friend of mine, looking for support and maybe a pat on the back…he literally called me an idiot and a P@$& for not dealing with it… that convo changed the way I looked at this BUSINESS

We have tried various marketing methods and our focus has been on Direct Mail and SMS texting.However even though we are getting some calls, all the properties are not stressed or needing work so we can get a low enough price to be able to wholesale.So we are starting to believe the best way to increase our success in finding wholesale is "driving for $'s where you obviously find distressed properties because you are literally looking at them and then we can focus our time and effort on finding the owners.