It was a great chance for me to learn housing repairs inside and out and now I see huge potential in marrying my skills with future real estate deals.The experience of owning a short sale taught me:1) I have the ability to recognize a property with potential.

Stick with your proven model.

The question is do you know how to evaluate a deal and recognize a great deal?

In other words, what are some proven business plans investors have followed in the past to build their portfolio into a multimillion dollar business? 

They recognize that the path to maximizing their income is to maximize the performance of the property for the landlord.

Lenders will consider less job time especially with a proven stable history or moving jobs within the same industry.  

They aren't recognizing the HOA as the owner.

A skill in real estate dealmaking is recognizing the scope and scale of problems and discerning the gap between principals understanding of the severity and reality.If the knowledge gap is small, and they are super motivated, you can offer structure a deal to take off the market, manage expectation and control the asset while you solve the problems.If they're in la-la-land and think they can do better, best to decide if you'd ever want in the deal then, if yes,be patient while tgey knock themselves out mash it around.Most any real estate problem can be fixed with enough to money.

You will need to have some skin in the game as far as down payments some lenders will fund from 65% all the way to 100% after you have proven you know what you are doing.

I had to recognize that if I worked 40 hrs per week at $5hr for a year then I would only be saving $10,400 and missing out on generating income from my other businesses.I find that time helps to make up for renovation blunders/over expenses when you buy and hold rentals with positive cash flow.