Partnership: I believe there must be an agreed-upon on who does what or who decides on what, and that there must be an element of trust between partners!

I allowed fear to stop me from taking a chance on myself, to believe in my ability to battle diversity and overcome hardship. 

That being said, make sure you have the ability to run the property from afar that will include finding a property management company who can run the place for you and collect rent.

In addition to the points made regarding quick closes, ability to leverage to complete more projects, and acquire financing when banks will not offer it, from my experience good Hard Money can streamline and scale your process as an investor.

In addition, if you are self-employed with no full-time employees you may wish to consider opening a Solo 401k instead of a self-directed IRA as it has several advantages over an IRA LLC such as much higher contribution limits, direct checkbook control (i.e. no need to have the account at a specialty trust company), ability to take a 401k loan, exclusion from unrelated debt finance income tax with respect to investment in real estate acquired with non-recourse financing, etc.In addition, please note if you purchase debt-financed real estate with your IRA, unrelated debt finance income tax should apply to the income attributable to debt-financed real estate held by your IRA.

My realtor disappeared for months without a single update, I had no ability to contact the seller or seller's agent, the lawyer (recommended by my realtor) wasn't returning my calls.

This causes lower vacancies, higher rent values & the ability to increase rents more easily.Warren Buffet said it best “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”To be a successful investor it is imperative to not make decisions based on emotion, but rather look at the numbers & trends to guide you to the most rational decision. 

@Christopher B Leab I would make it part of their rent as a bill back - a flat rate though.

Would the FTB send a bill for $800 for each of the last years plus penalties for each of those years?

But while our desire to work with everyone is high, our ability is not.