It was a personal referral, received a credit at closing for renovations as well How did you finance this deal?

I personally again in my opinion only.. but these guys could be fake lenders.. for sure HML  do not have a requirement that they can only lend to a corp..

@Ryan Raven most states don't care if you screw up the management of real estate you own personally.The government does have a problem with an unlicensed person/company screwing up the management of properties they do not own.

A nice but expensive duplex on a beach or in an expensive area might be ideal, if you can swing the other half out of personal funds. 

Your IRA can borrow, but you have to be careful to not personally guarantee it.

However, I live close-by (30 minute drive), recently retired from my day-job, and if the loan is not too large, I might be willing to do a deal just to learn a bit more about another side of RE.  

I was sent an offering memo by a broker selling a multi-family building in an area no reasonable person would even consider affordable housing material yet the marketing materials made a point of emphasis to detail how the property would satisfy the need for affordable housing.

For the areas of interest (you are local so I'll say suburbs west of City Line Avenue) there are few and far between -and- have many investors sitting on large sums of cash to jump on anything that comes up (where I would be navigating a reverse 1031.) 

Unless you have a very large sphere to start it will be really tough to get going on your own.

Easy to use yourself too HELOC works (there may be some places that do a HELOCs on rental properties)I personally have used a 401k Loan on a few occasions - You're essentially borrowing money from your 401k and paying yourself back (interest goes back into your 401k as opposed to a bank) and if you don't pay your 401k back the loan would simply become a withdraw (maybe some tax penalties, but you could probably finagle a workaround).