They offer competitive rates and are often crowd funded.Patch of Land is one such company.

For a newbie (no deals), in an extremely competitive market (North Denver) I would need to understand the process of rezoning myself.Where is the best place to start in understanding the re-zoning laws?  

One other good reason to get into small apartment complexes is the quantity of competition is lower and more in your favor.  

but your right in todays world NET margins if we are not fibbing and puffing are 15 to 30k... that's it.simply too much competition... and too much money chasing too few deals. and of course its relative to the price point.. friend of mine does 20million specs in Beverly hills area and makes a few million per deal or more... so that skews net profit.And distressed real estate sales in our area NW  is down to a trickle.. not much volume a lot of my high volume foreclosure guys are now building new construction.. as they simply have not a lot of distressed real estate to sell.Big money for us right now is taking farm land and getting it up zoned... 2X to 4X is the norm.

Please realize that I am not saying your agent will find you a deal in three days...that's foolish especially in an uber competitive market where we are frequently seeing multiple offer situations that inflate strategically priced homes.

An LLC/Corporation is an option, but I would definitely recommend a conversation with one of our Global Property Specialists that deal with overseas buyers on a daily basis.

I think your real competition is weekly/monthly hotels.  

A place like Montgomery county is  very competitive and does not have a lot of distressed property to add value. 

This is a global, or at least a National, market.  

Otherwise you will be sitting there trying to figure out if something is a good deal while your competition us putting it under contract.