@Ella Marie the Pro's are you can build long term wealth, the Cons are you can lose money if you cannot properly quantify risk.

Belly to Belly is the best way for private money..

I don't know anything much about real estate, nor have the money at the moment.

If you actually need to do permits on everything or just structural fixes and big items (I.e. roof, siding, windows, etc.).

I just lost $10,000 in earnest money, will be sued for the sellers agent's commission, and my agent doesn't get a dime.

I can buy a 2-4 unit with 20% down vs conventional can only buy a 2-4 INVESTMENT property with 25% down 4. there are options where DSCR loans dont repot to personal credit, helps in not having to show a bunch of paperwork or not one person in a partnership has to carry the debt5. way less paperwork to close on this loan type vs a conventional loan. we care about the income of the property you're buying and it's ability to service the debt of the property whether we use long term rents income, lease income, or air dna/bnb income.6. easily buy in partnerships, add people to your operating agreement, its as easy as that so bring partners into a deal. helps with scaling and raising capital or getting partners involved7. gift funds allowed to close on these as well, and like I said earlier, there's only a 10day seasoning period of funds with some lenders so that means you can literally have a private money lender deposit money into your account 11 days before closing, and you can use those funds to close!

I would never put my money into a shrinking population base. 

I never was able to find a pad split rep that actually seemed to cared that much to discuss my property.

and that was owner occ.. todays rates are pretty normal actually. what you can do if you want though is find a really good HML and let them place a loan for you making 10 to 12% while your wait for things to change to a situation that you feel you want to move forward be more net return than buying a rental thats for sure. of course no tax bene's but there really is not that much tax benefit on one rental.. so just some alternatives. 

This book introduced me to financial concepts and made me look at money and investing in a completely different way.