I did allow a "long term", very skilled (in all aspects of construction) tenant do a fair amount of stuff.

I've always been known as a charismatic people person with a mathematical mind, but I lack most handyman skills.

If they say it's to buy "supplies" or such then they're not substantial enough to have trade accounts.

I have made the decision to attempt to buy 1 multifamily cashflow property per year for four years and trade up to a place I can afford to live in Astoria (or Sunnyside, LIC, Woodside).I plan to use my NYC compensation from my career as a film/tv technician to buy in markets where my money will go a lot further, while continuing to rent in my relatively cheap 5th floor walk up.

There are many different ways to get creative in doing real estate deals, seller carry backs, partnerships, private lenders, using other collateral, using money from retirement accounts, exchanges, trades, etc.

Getting a bank to go there isn't easy for those new in the business as Chris mentioned.Creative financing is the use of assets and in some cases your abilities and experience in facilitating an acceptable financing arrangement in a transaction.Several ways to lower your entry expenses, seller financing, assumptions, obtaining rights to profit from a contractual interest, cross-collateralization, trading properties, sweat equity from construction or management contracts, acquiring liens, partnerships.....commercial opens other avenues and the list goes on.Great point John!

If your contractor/partner is committing a month of his time with no income from this job, doing work personally as well as overseeing trades - that's a significant contribution.

But that requires a good bit of training on demographic research, (not to mention design skills or the budget to outsource the design of your landing pages) and statistical data analysis so you can project the yield on your ROI.

I'm an architect that could put my skills to work.My rentals in SF have a CAP rates of 8-12%, but I know its impossible to find in the Bay area now.

The downside of selling to buy something new is that you're trading in an asset you know everything about for one that you know little about.