:roll: Before I go into Marco's bootcamp, you have to purchase his system close to $5 G's - The Black Box - which contains nothing much in the black box unless you need a cheap calculator and a tiny notebook and a video of who he is or was.

The pet occupied property filters are always black, and the no pet property filter light gray. 

However, I'm not advocating you get rentals that are going to be a black hole. 

Mitch Swenson at NAI Black is a mentor of mine and one of the top multi-family agents around.  

Everything else is BLACK AND WHITE.

Eric Black

Jason, others may have had a different experience but in my personal experience hard money lending is - like much of business - built on personal relationships.I would recommend you start going to a local REIA such as the RI Real Estate Investors Group (rireig.com) or Black Diamond REI (BlackDiamondREI.com) and network, maybe identify a few promising folks, take them out to coffee or a meal, etc. and just look to start building a few relationships and identifying good prospects.Then when you have a deal you're looking for a lender on, you'll have a few people to start asking and maybe if they don't know someone they can recommend you to someone else in the group (one of their contacts).People are much more comfortable recommending people they already know and have "vetted" as having a minimum amount of knowledge, so that's what you'll really be trying to do - establish that you've educated yourself, didn't just get out of your first seminar last weekend, are committed to real estate beyond this year, etc.All that said, if you think you really have a good deal and have a compelling case to make to a lender*, by all means announce it at one or more local REIA meetings and you may end up making a connection right away.But if you don't already have a good deal & value proposition for a lender then I'd say go the long-game, relationship-building route.

I hear so much about folks owning portfolios of rentals and rehabbing multiple houses a year, but what does it really look like in black and white financial terms...?

What if they want one bedroom orange, one purple and one black?

Sorry it isn't more black and white.