With these limits, expectations should be for sweat equity nut not to be able to extract full investment. 

I was sweating bullets a week before closing, fresh out of college, newly married.

With cash in the bank, most of the guys on there would be looking for a total “crap house” they could buy for $80K, spend $20K in like-new repairs to then appraise the property for $125K.If you can swing this you can then do a cash-out refinance and pull out your entire $100K and have a 80% leveraged property that will cash flow in a lot of areas of the US (and you have your cash back).The goal is to put your money into a property and add sweat equity…Then take your money back OUT… then repeat.

Is there any way to write off or deduct your own labor or sweat equity put into an investment property?

Sweat Equity:Our sweat equity was our biggest asset.

Lots of sweat equity.What was the outcome?

Foundation issues would keep any investor up late at night in a cold sweat.

It's not you so try not to sweat it. 

@Jassem A.I don't think many people would advocate for going back to sweating copper fittings. 

At the start of the 8 week class I sent an email to my teacher saying I wanted to buy my next property. 10 weeks later I was under contract and I'm almost done rehabbing it (it was trashed and I put in a lot of sweat equity) and already have my refinancing lined up.