You are basically sending your risk capital to run their business and they have ZERO skin in the game (basing this on the fund I was in.) 

If you did, instead of a gun, you'd probably carry around hand-sanitizer, a defibrillator, and sunscreen, as the flu, heart disease and skin cancer are tremendously more likely to kill you (about 40 times more likely) than you being murdered.

But let's not forget- it's the seller's free choice to accept a contract with such minimal earnest money that the buyer wouldn't have a shred of skin in the deal.

I say be comfortable in your own skin.

In my opinion, anyone that would abandon their pet is a worthless waste of skin!

A private lender or hard money lender may be necessary as $19,800 won't be enough to buy a house outright, but you will have some funds to use to put skin in the game in case your lender requires it.

Also, your $100k is valuable to private investors that value you having skin in the game. 

"Skin in the game?"

So a sponsor that's great for one investor will probably be terrible for another (and vice versa).I'm a conservative investor, so when I prefer sponsors that have at least one full real-estate cycle of experience, little to no money lost, low leverage, and high skin in the game.And there is a multi-family operator that has multiple real estate cycles of experience (decades) with no money lost, low 65% less LTV, and high 10%+ skin in the game.They market under 506B so are prohibited from posting publicly on the Internet and instead function by referrals.

@Clay Manship  So at the end of the day, you will have only $7,000 skin in the game on a $245,000 property?