You can also hold money for maintenance, capex, taxes, insurance, or other projected expenses.

The refund part is just to get you get committed to another deal that makes them even more  money than that refund.

And starting to get some money is better than no money right ? 

DSCR loans are not that low and regular hard money loans will be in the double digits.

Explore my personal favorites, Set For Life by Scott Trench or The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, for invaluable financial insights.3.

You can attend all the REIAs and read all the books and sign up for all the conferences, and spend all the money, and you are will never really know you can do it until you do.Over 20 years in real estate in various forms and roles, action will beat out intelligence or education or even network 100% of the time.  

The numbers may look good on paper, but the reality is very different-lower quality tenants, higher turnover, more problems and less money than you'd expect as a result.

Alternatively, I could explore hard money lenders.

Halethorpe/Elkridge/Glen Burnie are good as well but your money definitely won't go quite as far as Dundalk and Essex as everyone has hinted about here.  

What if you need to inject more money?