But recently I talked to someone that took a policy out on his son 25 years ago and now the son was able to borrow from it, use that to start his real estate investment portfolio, and then pay it back when he refinanced the property. 

Once you can communicate that to an agent, they should be able to tell you which coverage will give you those results with your type of portfolio. 

Our plan is to buy and build rental property unless a better oppurtunity presents itself.I look forward to meeting or working with many of you as grow my education and portfolio.

And if you had a big portfolio with a bunch of depreciation, travel receipts, etc how would you realize that?

I would like to begin my real estate journey with wholesaling as the foundation of my real estate business and after mastering that process I would like to begin rehabbing properties and building a rental portfolio. 

I typically recommend finding a local appliance repair shop that you would feel comfortable working with, and purchase brands that they are certified to work on, and stick to those brands across your portfolio.

But even then if it profits enough, I would just keep the property for my portfolio. 

I'm not sure of your overall portfolio status, which is a big consideration, but on the commercial side typically our target is to have a 5% +/- vacancy rate (as long as we know our leasing team isn't slacking).

So I'm going through my rental property portfolio and raising rents due to proposition 10 and possible rent controls in California... see (no on prop 10 www.noprop10.org)For single family houses:I was wondering what the pros and cons are to paying for utilities?

As we want to scale our fix and flip business and rental portfolio we do want to start raising private capital.