Unless the property was purchased at a very high discount, you typically will not recoup 100% of your investment dollar.

Buying at a discount is done for profit.

I got a discounted "contractors" price of $2431 from ABC Supply.

(For multi family properties obviously)Negotiate a discount on your property management fees (works best when you have multiple doors).

In general most are charging from 9 to 10.9% to reduce the discount required.

"Initial major rehab items as part of the purchase" are items that I got a discount in the purchase price for because they needed to be addressed right away.

Andrew, You can have your friend take a listen to BP Podcast 17 with Jeff Brown He discusses having Life Insurance, an employer 401k or rollover IRA that you can move to a self directed IRA or SOLO 401k and purchasing discounted notes.If the person is interested in real estate but doesn't want to get their hands dirty, buying REIT's may not be a bad option until they get up to speed on where they want to focus their energy and money.

Sales, we use the top agent in our area to list our houses at a significantly discounted listing fee. 90% of our homes are sold that way, the occassional one we sell via word of mouth before they are listed.

You're either going to have to find another investor who will make the same mistake that you did (and you're going to have to be willing to let the guy make the mistake and still be able to look at yourself in the mirror every morning), or you're going to have to discount the price, or bring money to closing, or chunk a bunch of extra money into the property.

I will post after our meeting to let you know how it all went, also I be sure to post when i get a property under contract. i posted on craigslist, talked with some realtors, and wholesellers in my area for deeply discounted properties.