Wash rinse and repeat.What is hard for me right now in terms of motivation is that, although I know on a rational level that the abovementionned steps will work and have worked for millions of other investors I have not yet gotten 8, 9 and 10 since October 1st 2014.  

I fixed that while I was there yesterday night.I just got text form them saying thank you for work and asking discount in next month rent due to damage to rug and some damage to tv.In your experience , is it a reasonable request?

Do I sink a lot into a home and have very low mortgage, continue to work and have more monthly net income?

I have to tell you, I'm pretty handy person, I've seen the guys work, and there is definitely a knack to the trade.It's not as easy as it looks on the DIY shows!

You will not get a good size of business credit without any personal guarentee.If you don't want to use your credit, your best shortcut is to find someone with good credit as partner, establish your business credit with good DUNS number 80+ (Just call Dun and Bradstreet for that) then apply for your line.

but, that is a lot of work, and a ton of money, with multiple large developers involved.

And I wasn't looking for any short cuts or substitutions, just other options to this area of legwork.

I certainly wouldn't spend much money on a shack in the war zone of south central LA but I might spend a bit more on expensive work and/or materials sitting at a job site in West LA, Hollywood Hills, etc. where SFR's can go for $2M-$3M and up.

Here's the situation...We just bought our first rental property and in an effort to save some money on the renovation, my wife took the last few months off work and, along with some help from our "flipper friends," she has handled pretty much all of the repairs at the house.

Our best workers become part of our "team" and we let them know we value them by speaking highly of them, complementing their work, and treating them to lunch, or tickets to a show, or even paying for a professional massage or trip to the dentist from time to time.