There are creative ways around it, but you'd need to have good credit and income. 

The reverse is true for better areas.Another thing to consider is the attitude/expectations and upward mobility of tenants: Tenants in the very best areas may be "entitled" and expect a perfect unit and lots of improvements. 

It only gets dicey (and this can apply to Class A properties too) when you take shortcuts on checking credit, income or rental history.

Not sure why you would have to pay above market rate in any case given that your credit, DTI, and reserves are all good enough.

Are you looking for Capital (money) partners, and you have good credit, Or are you looking for Partners with Credit, because you have the Capital to do the deals?

Credit not so good but from years back.

I put 60k in improvements to the infrastructure to get a commercial tenant in there.

if you have less than 1,000.00 under your name, and owe almost 100,000.00 in student debt, and have a terrible credit, and income is not stable... where do you start?

Now we would like to release some of that equity to buy a rental property - but I don't have the credit score to take two dings, i.e. one for the HELOC and one for the rental mortgage. 

It is an improvement to the propoerty, so it should be depreciated, over 27.5 years.