I suppose they are happy.then you have others that drive 100k cars and those car's are sitting the parking lot of the apartment they rent..Or buy really nice cloths and Jewelry... take great trips etc etc.its whatever floats your boat.for me it was airplanes I bought my first one when I was 25.. 5 planes later and a few million bucks .. could I have done better with real estate NO doubt never made a dime on any plane just spent big money on them.. but you can't take away the satisfaction of the ability to run down to the airport jump in my plane and in 3 hours be 750 miles away from where I live either doing business or some other neat adventure... would other people find the joy in this that I do  ... some yes.. some hell no.. they would think its a total waste of money.

Personally, we did the flooring, painting, some demo, landscaping, a lot of trim work, and many of the smaller aesthetic projects (floating shelves in the guest bath and laundry room, sliding barn door, etc.) on our own which cut costs a good bit. 

All the 1% deal talk floating around BP for OOS properties is a losing recipe, and people take it at face value without actually calculating their own NOI and throwing in some conservative reserves.Can't tell you how many investors come to me going "i want a 10% cash on cash return with financing" on an 80k SFR out of state.

I take loan with 35% down payment and get interest only floating ARM loan for as low as 2.25%. 

Can I borrow half a million (I estimate 250k to get started)... then use some of the rest to kind of pay for the loan while we get setup and float through the rest of the year.I suspect that we will pay back the loan in two years, maybe a LITTLE more.

A good drywall finisher (or an old plasterer) can float the ceiling out without having to install a layer of drywall... best part, no seams that bleed through... 

Antithat is what I meant, the term passive income is floated around as if checks just float to the bank for youI have a friend and mentor who owns about 15 million worth of mortgages in his AR.

This will bring the metal/mesh patch closer to the original sheetrock which reduces the amount of float area, reduces the ability to see a patch when completed and allows for easier feathering when finishing.

Either way, scraping or sanding, you're probably going to want to float it before you apply any new texture.

No going back if there's a problem or major damage, unlike floating flooring.