You need: 1) a solid, foolproof way to estimate so you actually make money, 2) a comprehensive and exhaustive Scope Of Work, 3) a good looking Proposal, 4) a legal Contract for your state that protects both you and the customer, 5) Change orders that document both cost and time increases, 6) professional invoices and receipts, 7) all the appropriate lien releases etc.Actually knowing to be the perfect carpenter comes a distant second......

How fool proof are you?

The simplest foolproof strategies is to have full downpayment for conventional loan, investing in some rental with a cap rate 6-8% so that gives you positive cashflow.

My second piece of advice is to make a fool-proof eviction checklist that you can run through each time you need to do an eviction.

I guess no matter how well you screen the tenants nothing is fool proof.

Some would say it is not foolproof, but that is the theory.  

Renatus is a fool proof idea to get people to leverage their existing mortgages (or other ways for capital) for the 20K capital in an effort to recoup with future deals.

It makes it safer, but not foolproof.

TI is important in what the lease tenant wants and also what kind of increases there are in the rents.I like corporate tenants because although they are not fool proof often you get big backing with a guarantee on a lease and their books are better kept and more transparent then mom and pops in many cases.

I'm starting to realize all these big real estate groups have nothing but angles from selling the banks, mortgage companies, brokers and their "special program"  and then they tell you when you can't do it, your doing it wrong that's why your not getting results and as we know most people are capable of following programs that are "fool proof" so with that said I'm not a know it all but rather a realist in the theory their is no "free lunch".