What are the challenges of passive investing as opposed to traditional real estate investing? 

Just a follow up question, were you utilizing debt to invest, I have always been taught since a young age to try and not utilize debt (I come from a family of stock market investors, traditional business owners) where debt is not utilized as frequently which I obviously understand debt can be a very powerful tool and utilized in a great way its just something I want to avoid with my investments to an extent any suggestions for investing without debt or as little as possible. 

As a side note typically I do not use my deferred tax dollars to invest in traditional real estate as the benefits (depreciation etc) are all lost when using a self directed IRA - My guess is build to rent will provide little to no cash flow to build the account - it will all be locked in the property. 

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

I received a bonus of $6,000 and I thought I was rich.

Like a rich uncle or friend of the family doctor/lawyer?

It is a get rich slower scheme, but with less risk.How do you figure a paid-off property throws off more cash (per month, yes, but in comparison to how much you put down?)

It's a "get rich slow" formula. 

I used Roofstock to sell one of my rental properties in TX as their sales commission is lower than going through traditional sales channels. 

Dan, Investment HELOCS are extremely hard to achieve considering they are not DSCR underwrites. they are more traditional conventional qualifications.