It also gave me a mentor whom was willing to answer my questions by cell, always available. 4) Be mindful that many partners will want you to have skin in the game, somewhere, so look for that. if you're a Realtor, you may also have leverage. 5) Have fun.

I am looking for some advice on a property I saw that, on the surface I think it looks like a winning deal.  

Too hard to keep clean, and I've even seen some lower end stainless surface rust from magnets (kid's artwork).

Because if so, it sounds like you are over-leveraging yourself and not having much "skin in the game".

There are lots of ways to skin the cat in this game and the first step is figuring out what are your goals first. 

That is if you are scraping by and constantly calling your lender for draws...ideally you'd have plenty of working capital so you don't have to delay things while waiting for draws.On the rental side, you should be able to get into pretty much any property with 20% down, so you'd also be looking at around $40K out of pocket.If you're thinking about an area where properties are in the $100K range, then you'd be looking at cutting these numbers in half.Even if you find a good hard money lender for a flip, they are not going to lend you 100% of the capital and will want to make sure you have some skin in the game (especially if it's your first flip).  

They have skin in the game.

They will almost always require 20% - 30% skin in the game in the form of cash from you and/or partners.Some will also look at your experience in whatever kind of investment you're trying to buy.

On the surface that sounds like a bad idea.

Want to price both laminate and hard surfaces for a buy and hold property.