My story -As an active real estate agent on both commercial and residential fronts dealing with retail consumers and investors.

If you put in no money, what guarantee do I have you will pay me back.This reverts back to the no money down stuff that has been promoted forever.

I'm excited by the residential and commercial real estate market of Southern California, and want to begin to explore investing while continuing to focus on my career in hospitality operations & sales/branding & entrepreneurship.I focus on opening and building operations and sales systems for event spaces, specifically venues converted from industrial buildings and independent, site-specific hotels and restaurants looking to create or repair revenue streams from weddings, corporate parties, workshops, and in-house programming.

No and I've only thought of it once and that was because a buildable lot in Raintree Country Club (arboretum area) came up...but I still didn't do it.It's too eexpensive, takes too long and way too time consuming especially for an investor and LAND PRICES in any area you should be investing in would be insanely priced.I think its great you are thinking of all options.

Yes, speak with a Consumer Protection attorney.

They're still getting paid on the drip feed - forever!

Filtering the turds from the gold is the time consuming part but we keep the pipeline full to filter out the turds.

However, its more time consuming than purchasing a list (Queens county clerks office has a computer system for Lis Pendens that looks like it hasn't been updated since the 90's). 

@Michael Lang,Indeed - your thread title was well chosen.The entrepreneurial mindset differs quite radically from the consumer mindset.The consumer mind says, "How much does it cost?"

Yes this is time consuming but you want to become efficient with it.