Spend time contributing and providing value for those who are in the business in some fashion or another and never eat alone (also a good book!)

It sounds like you've had a rough ride and your heart wasn't in it to begin with, a reason why so many don't venture into real estate or want to become a landlord, I hear it all the time.  

I'm a Property Manager full time and I'm close enough to work I ride my bike, Scott's book is my bible right now and so much of the content I'm applying now and was before. 

And you should also have plenty of cash reserves as well, so you can ride out the bad months.To answer your question about loans you can't get conventional loans as easily.

Many will disagree with this, but my risk tolerance is low, thus I am not as willing to "let it ride" on a RE investment unless the long term numbers pan out for my goal (I look for turnkey properties, fully rehabbed with $300 per door cash flow, 20% down, midwest markets).  

And yes, that is very important in a partnership, and we have all been on the same page prior to making any big decisions.My honest opinion is that the contractor hadn't handled a project this large (around $80K - although he claimed to have), and schedule as well as material costs took him for a ride he wasn't expecting.

Since land sells slow, I’m looking to possible sell these to someone wanting to buy the set and build spec homes, riding off the recent activity around.

@Sean Carroll  I build the teams the old fashioned way.

This is assuming you'll have an annual breakdown showing the investors CoC return and what the IRR will be for that investor's funds over the course of time that moneyh is invested.Assuming you're only rehabbing a portion of the units at a time, you'll obviously want to structure the rehab in a fashion that allows you to keep enough CF coming in to cover the debt service during stabilization (which should be interest only payments) almost as if you're backing into the figure needed to cover the debt service. 

@Frank Cameron what a wild ride!!