@Sam Wilson  the risk in Memphis in my mind is like any other deep south city or mid west city.. its buying in a war zone or an area were the neighborhood turns from good to bad.

My thinking is, these could be absentee owners that may be willing to sell at a discount.

Due to seeing these guys rip people off all the time I have a deep down hatred for them that is rivaled by little else.  

After that we can mortgage 5-10 more properties.I haven't thought too deep about post 20 properties.

I'm looking for multi apartments at a discount.  

The 2 duplexes will cost around 300k to complete, with my wife and I discounting the units to below cost.

@Dustin Lavender is correct that the "equity" is mostly created by buying at significant discounts and/or correcting significant problems.

@Hai Loc I am going to follow your thread because I have been trying to lock up land to build a duplex for a while (maybe I'm trying to hard to get a deep discounted deal).

The more you leverage the property (aka with seller financing), the higher the risk that you take during a downturn in the market because your cash flow is less than when not leveraged.However, if you buy at a deep discount, leveraging is your friend because your risk is already diminished due to the low purchase price.

You might set up a pro rewards account with Home depot, and if you can buy most of your materials together, ie drywall, paint, flooring, appliances etc, they will shoot you a discount on the whole job, and you can get it drop shipped to the store or even delivered to your job site.