Not an impossible task, but it winds up being ALOT of work for a home that is still likely to have a number of deficiencies compared to a newly built, energy efficient home.Now the question I've had a lot of people ask me is: I just bought a concrete block home.

*I USED to own properties in San Mateo Co CA (Silicon Valley)and found that the Building/planning dept was so malfeasant and next to impossible to work with that I sold my properties AFTER I spent YEARS trying to 1st get plans approved,** then completing the work.

And it's pretty much impossible to find a passive investment for that (and can only be done directly).

Not impossible, but difficult.  

Hard to do but not impossible. 2.

Saving 20% down for an investment seems almost impossible today.

As a side note, most of the properties I have been targeting were Neighborhood grade C which are quite old and one of my concerns is that I may need to spend a lot of money on repairs and maintenance.I feel that I would need to wait a little bit more and maybe save more for my down payment and try to target Neighborhoods grade B.I’m trying to do an FHA loan and buy a house in my local market but even when I’m targeting properties between < 600,000 (which would be a 2Bed, 2 Ba in a good condition), my monthly payment would be around 5,000 which is impossible to pay for me.So, it has not been easy and it won’t be but I’ll keep looking until I find one property that meets my requirements and helps me to achieve my goals.

Also, one of the reasons the snowball helps avoid risk is you're continuously reinvesting the same leverage so it would be nearly impossible to over-leverage.

Not impossible but it would be pretty tough to get an STR property approved unless you are an owner occupant.

Also given the fact that its darn near impossible to get any kind of civil judgement executed and collected on in Portugal.