Since I don't have $500K burning a hole in my pocket, I'm forced to find alternative solutions.

You can get where you want to go much faster by driving the fast car faster, but you can also crash and burn in a ball of flames.  

Add $50 for the tank of gas I'll burn driving back and forth and another $50 for the trip to Home Depot I'll take when I'm done writing this post.

This is important to me, as I am the type of person who would burn out if I went 100% investment route and lived somewhere I wouldn't live otherwise.  

Neighbor fell asleep with a pot on the stove and he burned down the entire 55 unit condo building.

Turns out another tenants teenage kid had a fire on an upstairs deck (against the rules) and didn't put it out.Yep, burned the house to the ground. 

Just make sure you have a very high cash flow ratio going into your purchase because you will get burned often. 

Either you take your chips off the table, you hold, or you keep buying chips.Bruce says affordability at 30% should have room to go lower, toward the 17% of past cycles; BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, lending is so tight that things could be different this time.Harry Dent has strong opinions about the near term future of the market; John Burns has equally strong contrary opinions.  

If that place burns, even half burns and especially if someone is hurt or killed, between the ins co and the fire dept, they'll go through that place like any CSI TV show crew would and figure out in court, under oath just WHO added those outlets that no one got a permit for!)

But I also burned the bridge by doing both loans.