Those were fat years!

Owners can in most all jurisdictions I am aware of do their own work .. and of course you can have an assistant help you.. 

From most comments it seems the consensus is when you are first starting out, build your portfolio as much as you can in the beginning by putting the minimal down and then later on advance to putting more down.Thanks!

In my case I need to start as early as possible because I want to bid on everything we can. In

They'll hit you with fat fees on the front/back end, jack your rate up, and take advantage of borrowers who were either too stupid or too impatient to save up for a reasonable down payment themselves - and they want to be paid for taking the risk on (essentially - subprime) borrowers like this. 

Like for many of us in the RE business that could be running a successful PM company A brokerage or sell real estate and make fat commish or Loan officer for conventional or commercial loans etc etc. you need that outside income so you can afford to own rentals.One of my good friends has a picture on his office wall  its his dump truck trailer and old back hoe.. thats what he started with on his own.

I think you will find better returns in SA because you can get more for your money than you can in Austin.   

Find out exactly how many apartments you can build there, is parking required, how tall can you build etc etc and come up with a general plan and layout for the property once you really know what you can do.Then I would look up as many apartment builders as you can in your area.

In real estate there IS a thing called Eminent Domain which yes Forky, it does mean the government can, in theory, take your property from you.

The scammer then collects as much as they can in the form of a security deposit and/or first month’s rent from unsuspecting applicants before they disappear.I’ll teach you a little trick though...if you save one (or more) of the photos from the suspected fake ad, and then search those images using Google’s reverse image search tool, you can often find the REAL ad.