Your learning will accelerate when you have skin in the game. 

Funding companies and banks are concerned that the cash out will not be used for business purposes and that the investor will not have enough skin in the game if things get tougher.If you qualify for government or agency financing that's great, but many of our investors do not and they rely on small banks and funding companies.

The biggest ego seems to coincide with the thinnest skin.

I can only speak from a lender's perspective, but we're going to want to see some "skin in the game" from the borrower.

In my opinion.And, as I mentioned, it's also always possible to negotiate to simply get the neighbor to deed over enough property to meet the boundary requirements so his property meets the setback requirements.Lots of ways to skin this cat.

I agree with Jay, I want to see the numbers, the experience of the sponsor and how much skin they putting in the game.

Most lenders will not allow a subordinate lender without some skin in the game (at least 10% down from the borrower). 

There are a lot of different ways to skin the cat, not just one. 

There are more than one way to skin the cat, so ask people who are doing things that don't make sense to you how they are doing it. 

In my experience people ho have no skin in the game tend to care less about keeping the property up than those that have to work to have it.