We pooled our money and our first property was a 30 unit foreclosure in a depressed area, about 50% occupied.

Unless you jump through the SEC hoops, pooling funds will be an issue and pretty well discussed here, enough so that most qualified investors know to avoid such arrangements.While there are ways to allow individuals to get involved in buying notes/mortgages, allowing the broker to service (or a servicing firm do so) participations should be avoided by new investors, where they join with others to purcahse any mortgage.

It is institution/corp/pool/REIT driven (large entities with cash).

SmartMove works great as long as your applicant pool have email addresses and credit cards...

After a couple months of nail biting, I'd have it back up to a comfortable amount combining net rents and personal income. 60% of the vested portion of my 401K works fine to cover reserves for the bank.I think you need to have more money available as you get more units as the risk increases up to a point where a pool of money shared amongst all the units works fine.

Without the giant pool of cash buyers I had become accustomed to, I was leery of certain types of properties in certain areas.Unfortunately sellers were still in their bubble mindset and didn't yet have any understanding how the the lack of lending was going to affect them.

Going forward, we are planning on pooling our funds together to hopefully obtain more investment properties.

I took Scotts VNBFD in August 2016 and bought my first pool of notes in October 2016.

That limits your buyer pool.

If the flowers are blooming and its warm and sunny then things rent very well.