When I was practicing bankruptcy law, a lot of debtors used the HAMP program to stay in their homes as they modified other debt.

You can choose to maximize the return by leveraging the business with debt or you can purchase for cash and reduce the risk and the return investment (or any level of leverage in the middle). 

Doesn't matter the size of the debt or payment amount.

You either need to report less debt or more income. 

@Gregory Schwartz depending on what your MOS and background is you could look into a job at USAA Real Estate on either the debt or equity side as an analyst. 

They’ll give you some guidance if you need to pay-off some of your debt, or boost your savings a before getting qualified.

It wasn't long before I had to make a hard choice: pay back my final 25k worth of debt, or continue to make minimum payments and start investing in real estate.

Now, your investors can be debt or equity.

In the event of default, going after the debtors other assets is an expensive, time consuming, and challenging process that they don't want to do and that does not often work. 

And the judges look for reasons to keep the debtor in his/her home.