So I have learned that if i fix them up front, I can market the improvements and raise my sales price.

The broker's and seller's certainty that you can and will close play just as important of a role and you will be up against other bidders that have that experience and perhaps have even bought from the broker (and maybe even the seller) before.If your situation is one where you don't have experience with ownership of income property and you don't have the $900K but need to raise that money from investors, then your plan should include buying smaller properties first.

If you dont have enough cash reserves set aside before you make the investment you might need to look at cash from credit cards that can be paid off when the property is rehabbed and stabilized and refi'd.

I've had pretty good success charging my tenant's benefit cards (MasterCard stamped).  

That suggests raising the cap rate  above 10?

Over the years, he has been able to raise the rent to the point where the tenant pays for the entire mortgage, taxes, insurance and most of the utilities.  

Starting out, I would like to try and do a fix and flip to raise some capital for other projects down the road.

After that, you can do cash-out refinance to raise capital.

So it would depend on your market: are there more people who make 120k a year who don't want to (or can't) buy a house or people who make $9/hr who can't buy a house.Another aspect is the ability to add value to an apartment complex from raising rent, adding coin-op laundry (debatable on the profitability), rental storage, soda/vending machines not to mention the natural appreciation.

I have 3 directions i could go and I'm looking for advice from my fellow BP investors. 1) My first thought is i should just find the highest paying job i can get to be able to raise the capital i need for my deals regardless of how unenjoyable and time consuming it is.  2) my second thought would be get a job with a construction/remodeling company.