Building a strong foundation is key to success in any real estate market.

You don't need to know everything to get started; you need a foundation to build on and the rest will come through experience and then refining your education.You can build a basic understanding of investing in 3-6 months.

Gaining experience is always a great way to build a solid foundation in real estate investing.

If what you refer to is "pier & post" (instead of poured concrete) foundation, it is easy to see if there is anything to worry about.

From what you've showed, I'd say your main focus should be working on your personal finance foundation rather than diving into an investment.

While shopping for a small multi-family building (3 or 4 units), I would like to get an inspection of the building to get an estimate of repair costs if any problems are found (foundation, roof, electrical, plumbing, heating). 

Landlords and property managers don't like the word mold and I totally get it as it can be quite costly if found at the wrong time.

So they would want the plans approved, and budgets complete with GC contracts before approving the financing, then once approved they will want site work and some foundation work funded by the sponsor before their money kicks in.

Before we made this step mandatory in our projects, we had to either absorb or pass along up to $20K+ in changes to sitework & foundation costs.

So far, we've pieced along different elements of this (different tax person each year, no LLC to one to now 2 this year, haven't yet used a bookkeeper...)trying to streamline systems and have a solid foundation for our fairly new and growing real estate portfolio.