I like the iTrust, but the thing that is bugging me is: do I want to hand a significant sum of money to some company I've never heard of in Las Vegas or godknowswhere Utah?

Definately does not go hand in hand with investing though.

I'm hands on maintenance.

They leave everything in the hands of the property management company, and we all know how many bad property management companies there are out there.What type of due diligence has the fund done on each of these 40,000 properties?

I think they just bid it low enough to get the work, knowing that they could wring in another grand.

Although I have invested in a handful of properties, I'm still quite inexperienced considering I was using a realtor, purchasing cheap MLS listed properties, working on them by myself, etc.

On a typical six month loan, that works out to about 11% of the loan amount, or about 7% of ARV.Yet on the third hand some HMLs want to see some percentage of the deal in your own cash, regardless of the numbers.Many HMLs require you to do the work first, get it inspected and then get reimbursed for the repair costs, if those have been included in the loan.And you will want to have enough cash to cover any unexpected problems.If your underlying question is "how can I do a fix and flip with none of my own cash" then I will say that is very, very difficult to do.

I explain the process, give them a stack of prepared deposit slips and they understand that is how they pay their rent.Very simple and no risk of you walking around with a wad of cash in your pocket on the same day at the same place every month like those "landlords" who like to get their money put in their hand.

At least in SoCal/Los Angeles County I should be able to experience decent appreciation.(2) I don’t have a good feel for the area, so I’m hesitant to purchase in the wrong type of area (bad location, bad pool of tenants, etc.).(3) I'm a beginning investor who intends to be a hands-on property owner (at least as much as possible at the start), which means a lot of long drives from L.A. showing properties, dealing with utility companies, handy-man/contractor visits, etc.

If you use excel, it has a built in formula for Cumulative Principal, that is what I will put here, although you can use a financial calculator or short hand math as well.