I have been weighing both options back and forth, and I think I should keep contributing and work on producing alternate funding strategies to being invested into real estate deals.

With this being said now that you are taking on more work you could delegate them to a manager just to take that stress off of you so you can produce income to buy more. 

Had great success buying my first rental because it was rented out a week after i bought it and produced $348 in cash flow since day one.

Luckily after we finished the house the market went up about $60,000 in that area and i minimized my loss by selling at $240,000 instead of $180,000. a lot of lessons learned and my next flip i started the day this one closed it took 3 weeks to complete and its going to produce a solid profit.

Subsequent efforts should be able to leverage what you have learned and should produce additional savings acting as GC.Good luck

Like Dave said, you can get stuck carrying some interest for just the chance at a little more money, meanwhile that land is producing nothing.

An investment that produces positive cash flow is an asset.

In the end, my loan broker had me write several letters and produce a balance sheet for his underwriters.

They are targeting a higher level of inflation, so falling housing prices are exactly the opposite of what they're working to produce.

Qualification is based on the asset producing a healthy enough NOI to cover debt by usually at least 1.20x (the Debt coverage ratio).