Hi BiggerPockets community,We are a married couple based in the California Bay Area, both working as software engineers with a combined income of close to a Million USD.

The labor forces used are rarely licensed and insured, are the bottom of the bottom and paired with the cheapest materials... a losing combination. 

And maybe it's not all or nothing for a given method, sometimes a combination of various financing tools is what wins.

In all my years of Property Management in one of the most tenant friendly Cities in the World, I bet there will be a lot of interested people, regardless if they are actually planning on buying in a tenant friendly City.My management style would be considered highly unusual as I approach these issues so that it becomes a win-win situation and take into account the human element of the tenant.There is potential for me to add more to that Podcast to include how the Portfolio did over the 28 years growth period (1998 to 2025) with real numbers.There will be things like making the Portfolio safer as I age by paying off the Mortgages and increasing cash flow, etc.I'm also a Cloud Software developer (Salesforce specifically) and will be employing a lot of A.I. in 2025.The RE Portfolio is cash flowing very well and I can afford to integrate experimental A.I. to test it out.Things like A.I.

You can combine a bunch full-time of investors together and would be hard-pressed to have a repeat of your story with a car crash.

Now think of this "work" as a combination of trade school and actual work.

There was a glut in wineries not long back when The Australian dollar was high and people who once couldn't get enough of Australian wine suddenly turned back to relatively cheaper and more fancy sounding French and Italian plonk, combined with the change in regulation in the Chinese wine market that killed it as a business drink.

Finance was a combination of a few different vehicles and ultimately ended with a HELOC which was then used to fund multiple other projects over the years.

Combining these strategies often gives investors the best balance of cost, simplicity, and security.

Since the assumable financing and seller carry combined could put a strain on your monthly expenses, it’s important to model different scenarios for vacancy, maintenance, and management costs.