(Successful builders of tract homes didn't start there - they gained experience and ended up there.)If you have skills and a few good trades people, you can do well buying distressed, fixing, and retailing homes. 

Having nothing stand out as foreign has made the coursework easy to digest and remember. 

However, I believe you are on tract with Metro-LAX, personally I believe wherever they have those landing sites where LAX users unload passengers, it is a good area, and there are 8 of them.

A few days later after everyone had a chance to digest the numbers, they were calling the agent off the hook, to which he had to tell everyone it was already gone.

Land in the path of progress  carefully chosen Timber or AG tracts etc etc.. so there is many ways to slice the real estate orange up.. end of the day though the true measure is IRR not COC .. that is if your ever going to stop being a landlord..

What I'm doing is buying them with hard money, getting them repaired and rented, then refinancing them with my commercial portfolio lender once I have a small tract record of rents.

You might think a cosmetic-only repair 3/2 in a desirable neighborhood should cost $260k, while she's trying to show you that current prices are about $400k, and practically no price difference between sales prices of finest of 1980's mauve decor tract shack and the same house after a full HGTV rehab.

After all, the property is the only one and unique (to the owner) despite that it might be a model-match house in a suburban house tract development.

depending on the state you live in i have a 2-unit owner occupied loan with 5% down and no pmi. min 660 fico and 2 ways to qualify. either the property must be in LMI area of if income is below 80% of median income tract.  

When we were shopping for our first cabin in the Smokies (had never been there and lived 8 hours away at the time and our son was in ICU) our agent not only helped us find a cash flowing property but also steered us away from what could have been a flop of a deal.We are currently fly u set co tract with our second property with them and are looking for the third (if that tells you anything).Also if you use their agents, they provide a complimentary back end training support program where you will get training and tips from the best of the best in the industry.