In the end I still made a profit and helped a new investor.

The strategy involves using the HELOC for a flip to generate fast cash, reinvesting profits into long-term rentals, or exploring alternative ventures like short-term rentals or partnerships.

Access to financing, such as 90% of the purchase price, can significantly lower the entry barrier, but success still depends on having a well-thought-out plan for managing renovation costs, timelines, and potential risks to ensure a profitable outcome.

And if/when dig deeper, come to find that entity is barely making a net profit end of day.

I'd plan to save any profits each month for future CapEx, repairs, vacancy until we had ~20K for this house set aside.

My thinking is this leaves me with two paths: A) Best case is I pick up the foreclosure for $1M, immediately list it for sale at $1.6M or more and hopefully sell for a > $500K pretax profit. 

The property cash flowed roughly $250 a month for 3 years and sold for a profit of roughly $80K.

This is a new underwriting guideline of the insurance companies because they haven’t been profitable and must raise the rates and lower the risk factors in order to comply with state regulations on adequate reserves and future solvency.  

My family was an investor in a Corporate Housing designated complex and it turned out to be very profitable.

At first, you won't be able to offset your W2 income with losses, but it is nice when you sell a property at a profit and all the capital gains are wiped out by losses from other properties.A huge amount of tax savings get unlocked if one of you leaves your W2 job to focus on real estate and you get Real Estate Professional Status (REPS).