When people are investing millions of dollars buying a property  they do not want to make a massive mistake using a newbie agent.

Depends a LOT on your competition and what you are targeting.I could rank for "sell my busted up shack in nowhere, GA" in a month because nobody else is trying to be there.It would take a year or more and real money to rank for "we buy houses" There are companies out there that are spending massive coin on adwords on some searches in our market, I guess they are selling leads or something.I'm 6 months in for "we buy houses atlanta" and am  at 80 on google and 40 on Yahoo and am spending some decent money to be that far up. 

The true key to success is"Be consistent and take massive action"!

Once you put your money down, your capital is tied up until on a you sell (unless you get massive appreciation and can refinance it out - not most areas).

Hard costs can go up considerably if you have to blast rock for foundations and haul massive amounts of dirt.

I believe in the future of Los Angeles and think that if you buy in a decent neighborhood (looking in parts of Hollywood, Echo Park, Mt Washington, USC adjacent, and other transforming areas of LA), get a tenant to pay the mortgage, then repeat as often as your capital allows, you will look up in 20 or 30 years and have both substantial income and massive asset base.   

On the other hand one of my favorite podcasts talks about putting in a massive amount of offers and adjust the price or terms of the offer to make the deal work for you.

Toledo uses Republic Services for trash pickup...the city contract allows a "bulk pickup" to be scheduled each month free of charge.My building is scheduled for Spring Cleaning on Tuesday night (I have a pair of guys just assigned to help organize, inspect, and handle anything heavy to be moved for the elderly tenants) but we should have a massive offering for the trash truck on Wednesday.

Build massive wealth with rentals.  

You're increasing your exposure to the real estate market by using a HELOC to finance an RE investment (beyond the exposure you have if you just have your primary residence + an RE investment) - if you're stable enough to add the risk, that's fine, but if a huge portion of your investable assets are exposed to the real estate market then that could be a massive issue in the case of a market downturn.