And you only discovered them when you pulled down the drywall?

I assume you're taking into consideration everything for the homes: taxes, insurance, vacancy, repair reserves, expenses (CPA, utilities, permits/fees), property management, etc.The way I have been able to purchase my investments in such a short span, is to purchase investments which need significant improvements, complete the improvements myself (I'm a contractor as my day job), rent the unit and then refinance to pull cash out.In addition to doing that, I went to friends and asked to borrow money.

You can also pull out a napkin from your Hardees bag and write up a contract on that, just you and the seller (or buyer).

.- This is what you do.Have a local real estate agent pull sold cash comparables in the area within the last 90 days.

Then apply for a refi and pull out as much as possible.

If however, you're Googling for GC skills (we are working as subs for a guy who is pulling his GC info from Google right now), you will probably benefit from using a GC.

Owners can usually pull their own for most types of work.

Go talk to some local banks/portfolio lenders about refiing and pulling some money out to purchase more.

If you have a strong historical capital and rent appreciation rate it might make sense to get into this market and wait for natural rent increases and appreciation to take hold and make for better investments if you wanted to stay local.You could also consider looking for turn-key investments in another city (Indy, Memphis, etc) where the returns could be much better - but the risk without having the ability to drive by the properties could be greater.

Chances`are, if you find people who can drill through a project like this, they will know more than you will, they can pull the deal down or have someone else pull it down if it's a great deal.