You could rent a home for under $2,000 and save the extra money.

In most places a mortgage is going to be less than rent-otherwise landlords would lose money.

The "failure rate" or "Pass-through rate" is where the loan officer is fighting to get an application to make a paycheck and it taking anything they can get but not putting in the work up front to avoid lost time, lost earnest money, and lost clients for realtors!

Apartments.com makes money by landlords paying to make their rental listings "premium" to get bumped up in search results.

Any thoughts on more creative financing other than taking money out of my personal house?

If you get into needing electrical work or plumbing costs rise considerably.

You are looking for a Hard Money loan.

If so, that would be a good starting out point as $20k can be enough with a hard money loan and a lower value property (although likely challenging in CA).DSCR Loans are an option for turnkey and a refinance - there is no DTI involved in the qualification so salary does not matter

.* We could lose money on a project, or make twice our planned profit. * The amount of hours spent managing could vary, based on size of remodel and number of contractors involved (10 hours or 80 hours, paid the same).* The house could sit on-market a while, meaning the PM doesn't take a commission for 6-9 months on that project. 

@Youssef Labib  I don't know about the success rate of this or any big guru program, however my thought is most people at the end have parted with a large sum of money with nothing to show for it.