You need one or the other, preferably both.Since you don't have any money, you'll need to focus on knowledge.Besides building your network, you can also start looking at properties to find market inefficiencies you can flip to an investor with funds for a fee.Wholesaling is the most common form of this, but you can do this in several different ways.Also, what happened if you found a "tired landlord" and got them to accept your offer of 0% down, but $x/month payment to take their problem off their hands via seller financing?

Most deals require a down payment and some sort of debt / leverage. 

I have a spreadsheet of how profitable I am going to be with the deal and these are the numbers: 245k purchase price, 20% down (49k) 7.2% interest giving me about $1,330 payments, looking at neighboring rentals with the same layout and interior I can potentially rent it for $2,200 hopefully but I expect the worst. 

(I also would like a loan that doesn’t require a high down payment). 

Looks like it could potentially double the payment making it really hard to profit from the property and keep it up to the level it needs to continue having a decent asset.

Received a down payment from the buyer and used that to pay back some of our HELOC because their down payment was not as much as ours.

For instance, if you've determined that your max down payment ranges from 3.5% to 4%, ask yourself: do you have the 4% for the down payment plus an additional 3-4% for closing costs (Yes, be prepared to pay the closing cost for the acquisition of your properties) on a $1.3M property, at your disposal?

I want to sell my home and use the gains to place a down payment on a new home as well as purchase properties in a lower income area for rental properties.

I have enough to cover the down payment but the property is going to need some renovations.

Completely free, tenants just have to pay fees for ACH/card payments and screening.