No, they require a deposit.If you order a wedding cake, do they ask to see your bank balance to ensure you can pay or do they require an upfront deposit?

If you bake a cake, it almost never comes out as good when the recipe is followed to the letter.

Buy House #2, finish the basement, and add a gas fireplace ... have cake, and eat it too.

When you have a place like Indianapolis that already has a thriving market for both flips and holds the prospect of Amazon is just the icing on the cake.

Piece of cake!

If they pay you its sprinkles on the cake.

As a Buy and Hold Investor your looking for income (Cash Flow is King) not appreciation (Just Icing on the Cake).  

Piece of cake :)If you can't afford to buy because you're busy racking up debt rather than income, you can take a similar approach with renting.

The tenants had a little bit of fun with it and added a birthday cake clause.  

The details on the particulars of that process are something I need to look into further, but I believe that there are many custodians and administrators that can make this happen for an insignificant cost, compared to the upside down the line.With one of those accounts, you can then invest in real estate (or virtually any other type of investment) just as you would with your after-tax non-retirement dollars, but with deferred gains as in the 401(k).This leads me to this conclusion:Given the before mentioned benefits of self-directed retirement investment accounts, it seems like a savvy investor could have his cake and eat it too - he might be able to take a great employer match in the early working years, hustle to build a real estate portfolio outside of the 401(k) on the side, and when he makes the transition out of his job, switch the funds over to a self-directed fund and begin investing in real estate through that.For the past year, I've become extremely interested in these self-directed accounts.