A fat Heloc will let you purchase without a mortgage, it's contingencies or 45 day wait ask of your seller. 

You can, in theory close on a house and walk over to the bank to refinance.

Read as many books and listen to as many podcast as you can in real estate. 

Over the last year or so, I have been soaking everything I can in real estate.

I truly believe in keeping as much property as you can in your portfolio.

@Jay Hinrichs - it shows up in the data: this is the Case-Shiller for San Francisco and you can in fact see how the market dipped a little in 1991 and then went sideways for the rest of the decade. 

So, I have skills that I know are useful, I just don’t know if they’re usefulness to MF teams that may already have the areas covered.I can (in another post when I advertise myself for the apprenticeship) advertise myself with the above skills, but I wanted to understand what investors valued so I can speak directly to those needs. 

It was more money than we had in reserveMy pets now sees the vet for slight infections, get premium pet food (I have a fat cat that is on prescription pet food that would not be cheap compared to human food).  

I'm trying to keep this as simple and streamlined as I can in terms of structure, liability, and operations.You mention "as you build up unit size"...is there a particular point at which you recommend a syndication?

I also suggest trying to be a sponge and soak up all the information you can in this beginning period -reading, watching webinars and videos etc.