After you've been at this for a while, you develop a deep disdain for people who need to spend premiums for bigger and better houses for their personal living situation before they have build an unassailable financial position -- those people are marks in the real estate game, not players.Real estate can be a hell of a passive wealth maintenance strategy.

It sounds like you've already made up your mind with sticking to the LTR market, and if you're cash flowing with processes already in place, I'd just recommend continuing that machine!

First post here, and noob in the game of real estate investing. 

My wife and I took his class back in 2011 and it was a game changer.

You also don't want to get into the game of discounting rent. 

You'll find that quite a few engineers turn to real estate as it's just a numbers game and we're all good at math.

I started investing in real estate about 18 months ago but I have acquired 7 single family homes that I manage myself so just Get In The Game and GO FOR IT!

bottom line is they talk a great game give you terms that you think you found a fold mine..etc.. nothing more than a sophisticated Nigerian  prince scam.

@Karan Malhotra I think @Jay Hinrichs and I are on different pages of the same book.I was probably getting too far in to the weeds to stick with the "general requirements" theme @Timothy Albright set up.I was simply putting the info out there that a hard money lender is going to require some "skin in the game".

seems like that is a bank refi situation not a raise private money so the owners have little to no skin in the game