@Brent Coombs so you're talking about buying a multi that needs some work and doing some rehab on it, thus allowing you to buy lower and increasing value through sweat equity?

If you sweat the small stuff like this you are going to go insane. 

For people who are cash poor and have lots of time on their hands, an all single-family rental portfolio makes sense, because they can put in a lot of sweat equity.

And of course the average note investor with no real experience just knows they CAN foreclose but generally does not have a clue how that happens what is involved the expense and the time line.so you compare lending in those states to say   GA  90 days start to finish from default  MS  60 to 90 days  TX very quick.Even WA OR CA 6 to 8 months no sweat  and in these states it not expensive even though in MS and GA you hire an attorney in WA OR CA you hire a trustee service that has a flat fee of generally 2 to 3k thats it boom done.  

I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and put in the sweat equity starting out to give myself a better chance against the bigger guys out there using a GC. in order to accomplish this, would have to keep my target market close to home.

I can hardly walk to my hotel from the parking lot in that weather.the year I spent in the south was an eye opener weather wise .... playing golf I would go through 3 shirts and as many gloves, the locals hardly broke a sweat. 

I believe in using debt to buy real estate, but it comes with inherent risk already and people's natural propensity to spend more or more spend more easily when they are spending something other than the money they earned through blood sweat toil and tears only increases that risk.  

That enables me to buy the property for below market value and to inject some sweat equity into the deal by doing the necessary renovation work.  

I put sweat equity into it.

So J Scott's question is something to think about.For those just getting started, however, there's nothing wrong with trading sweat equity and learning something in the process.I actually really LIKE painting (I know, I'm strange) but I don't want to be a house painter for a living.