A new form of lending institution has sprouted from the ground which has promised and delivered a much cheaper and safer method of delivering residential mortgage products.

seriously guys, look into cheaper ways to buy. using the funds from a re-fi from one house to buy more than one new house is growth. growth is what you want to do. make your money work as hard for you as you can. finding houses that are dirt cheap is the answer. there are several ways to buy real estate that are nonconventional. several years ago, the federal government restricted the number of foreclosures a bank can put back onto the market. consequently, that forced the banks to hold onto the less than desireable foreclosures and market only the best that they have. that added to the carrying costs of the remaining houses that they could not market. finally, they had to make a decision; hold onto those houses until they could market them, or dump them in light of loosing the carrying costs. most banks chose the latter. so, now, you have thousands of houses that the banks just dumped back to the previous owners by filing a release of lein with the counties that they are in. legally, you have a house that the bank no longer has a claim on, and the previous owners either do not know they own it again or they don't want it. there is potential for a hell of a deal.i bought one for $2000 on a tuesday and sold it for $10,000 on thursday. i also bought one for $2250 and picked up the back taxes for $4000. that one i am holding onto to rehab and will be worth $50k when i am done. tax sales are a great place to pick up extraordinary deals too. your problem is NOT on your cash end, its on your buying end

(Because my debt service is cheaper than my cap rate, the leverage created by my 75% financing should juice my return, but only slightly so let's ignore this.)  

Also consider the town of Philadelphia as they have their own municipal power company instead of National Greed, makes heat dramatically cheaper for tenants, and Indian River Middle and High School is right outside town. 

It was cheaper for us because we did all the work ourselves.One thing to remember - make sure to account for the cost of the supplemental materials.

This is because drywall work scales very well -- if you're doing big jobs, the materials are lot cheaper, you can afford good tools, and the work can be done so much more efficiently by more skilled contractors (so number of hours is lower).For big drywall jobs, I always recommend calling some of the companies that appear to be the biggest...

Not to mention that even an exorbitant 10 points might be cheaper than giving up half of the profits etc. 

If you have some negotiation skills and simi-cooperative tenants/residents, you can often accomplish it quicker and cheaper by using your wits.

Probably plastic, after all they'll save a buck on the cheaper part and it will last long enough to get paid. 

I spent 5 years there with the Australian Trade Commission back in 70's.Because of the bad weather, pigeons & the ongoing IRA fireworks, we found it cheaper/safer to leave for 3 day weekends (flextime was great) for various Med destinations.