We've worked together on that enterprise for 18 years.

It's more gambling than anything else.

However, the vacancy is really low in my area and prices are really high so it’s a gamble most house hackers take.

Perhaps I just missed out on the perfect opportunity to start my enterprise in making Gyros and Chicken over Rice.  

The alternative would be to find someone unlicensed/unbonded whish would be cheaper, but would be a gamble.

If you aren't willing to learn that investment asset, then you can either:1. find someone you trust to help you invest into that asset2. put money in low/no risk investment assets and just accept the low return3. blindly go into an investment asset and basically gamble.

With leverage you are using the houses money to gamble and not yours.

Your luck may be better and you are not assigned to the jokers I dealt with, but it would not be worth the gamble for me.

I will take less profit in a hotter area that sells faster than gambling on a small town/slow area with "potential" for higher profits.  

I don’t know the person, but I would think you could afford to gamble $525.