Now are there other ways to "skin the cat" that I haven't mentioned, absolutely so again just my 2 cents on a very general level.

A little thing called "skin in the game" is a powerful tool to vet out deals and to not get overextended. 

there are many ways to skin this cat.Leverage and team is important as @David Thompson was mentioning.I will give you another one to think about.what I did was raise some friends and my own cash and got 4 to 1 leverage for a HM lending lines of credit from banks.. we started with 1 million in capital which got us a 4 million dollar loan.. so had 5 million to lend out.. paying bank 1 point and 6%  and lending at 15 to 20% apr and making the delta.we ran that up to 35 million.. and that took about 14 people to run..

And that's a good thing, cash or skin in the deal make the borrower go in with their eyes more open to the down falls of the deal as well.

This is called internal rate of return (IRR). It’s

I don't think anyone would want to touch that even with the money down as it really is not a lot of skin in the game and it a higher risk deal. 

Ideally, this tenant would have some skin in the game.  

Almost all lenders want you to have skin in the game, and some leeway should a deal or the market go sideways.

Often someone will say "You have no skin in the game I am taking all the risk."

Paying a contractor upfront always irritated me.