I have a primarily stay-at-home job with excessive free time. 

Despite this, there’s still a ton of appetite for participation.

Prior comment of getting 15% in these investments - honestly I don’t see it because of the burden of the overhead to deal with small dollar investors.We started our fund At $500 and quickly bumped it up to now it’s $5,000 because of the costs of dealing with these small dollar investors was to excessive.

(And let the excess basis be depreciated over 27.5 or 39 years, as is typically done on real estate without a cost seg.)About @Sang Ji's question "can you do the cost segregation for the new apartment complex you buy through 1031 exchange". 

You also will not be able to see the house and no one should buy sight unseen without a history of doing it.If you are talking about Auction dot com or Xome or Hubzu, those come with a buyer's premium on top of the sale price between 5-10% and often have ghost bidders in the system so you will see it keep getting reset to hit a higher bottom.As a new(er) investor, auctions are where you go to lose money and take on excessive risk.

I am clear on our markets of interests, returns we would like to see and our risk appetite.  

The bank will sometimes take the excess funds (difference between redemption amount and winning bid) as a immediate cash benefit on their books and write off the loan.  

I follow a checklist in order to get rental properties up a certain standard: - The interior and exterior paint should be free of excessive wear, smudges/dirt and preferably in neutral colors.

Shocked that there's an appetite for this stuff.

Losing approx $5-10K per month during summer seems excessive.