I bought from a distressed landlord, who is an older man (ex-army).

I know wholesalers that have been sued on this one as well as agents.. agents just lose their license.. wholesaler just get sued.. and dont have a license to lose.I have been buying distressed assets for 40 some years.. and been a broker the whole time..

I was able to get the property under contract due to a distressed situation, where the owner ran out of money and was unable to finish the project.

If the economic environment gets distressed significantly I can still service my debt and operating expenses, I’ll just have to sacrifice some cash profits during a downturn.

Lets say you find a distressed SFH for 50k plus 30k of rehab needs.

Not to dive too deep here but one thing to look out for is sometimes a property can be assessed at a low number for whatever reason (usually because it is distressed which lowers the value).

I’d guess the best goal is to use cash reserves and HELOC if needed, to do an all cash buy on a distressed home, rehab it in the hopes the ARV will afford you to recoup all your capital+ to leave no money in the deal, have a cash flowing property, and pay off your HELOC without the seasoning period that would be required if you financed through a lender to begin with.

Was it a hard money loan on a distressed property?

Rents only really go down for a few reasons: 1) Local economic distress when a major employer moves away and/or population is declining, 2) Market oversaturation, i.e. too many new rentals come on line all at once, 3) Idiosyncratic circumstances, which can't be predicted.Hope this helps! 

The best way to approach distressed homeowners are to find out their goals and educate them on their options with their distressed asset or situation if they are behind on their mortgage.