It can be opened with a contribution.

And the guy was great, really professional actually. so I did end up contributing a bit to his family income for the year.

The notion of causing a DIL is not ill founded, you can get a mortgagee to give a Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure but in many cases do not underestimate how difficult that might be.

In addition, if you are self-employed with no full-time employees you may wish to consider opening a Solo 401k instead of a self-directed IRA as it has several advantages over an IRA LLC such as much higher contribution limits, direct checkbook control (i.e. no need to have the account at a specialty trust company), ability to take a 401k loan, exclusion from unrelated debt finance income tax with respect to investment in real estate acquired with non-recourse financing, etc.In addition, please note if you purchase debt-financed real estate with your IRA, unrelated debt finance income tax should apply to the income attributable to debt-financed real estate held by your IRA.

If rents are higher, interest rates are lower and you're self managing (and contributing your labor for free) that simple rule of thumb doesn't really work.

I hope to be able to contribute to others soon.

I am a long time reader of biggerpockets but a new contributing member.

In fact, I would love to contribute to a new forum category called: "Miserable Failure Stories . . . but at least I learned something!"

The only way you would come close is contributing then to a REIT in exchange for shares.

I guess to answer your question, the average rehabber may not, BUT a more experienced rehabber should contribute to creating more favorable conditions making the whole project worth it.Sounds like a great project!