I realize the desire to own a sfh after living in apts fir the last 7 years but whats a couple more in the scheme of things ?

If most of the money is made from new recruit than it is a pyramid scheme and that's a scam where only the members already in are benefiting. 

That is insane, it is a shame that there are people out there thinking of every way possible to scheme rather than taking those same efforts to do something worthwhile in life. 

Now, pile on the fact that rents go up even if you weren't cashflowing from the start, values go up, and you can do some of the more elaborate refi and reinvest schemes upthread.

This is why I LOVE cash flow real estate investing over "Lump Sum Retirement" With lump sum I don't know what the cost of living is going to be in 40 years so I don't know how much I really need to contribute to the ponzi scheme called the 401k or IRA. 

While nobody wants to pay pmi, rates are so low another 0.5% to 1% really isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things if it lets you keep that 15% as cash.

Pretty cheap - well in the grand scheme of sound proofing.

Worth the small investment - pennies in the big scheme of things.

I know of one guy in my city that got scammed 4,800 after seeing a unit in person and signing a lease (a rather complex scheme)

That being said, my sample pool in the main scheme of things is pretty small (probably 15k customer pulls or so).