Also, do you have enough personal income coming in to cover the negative cash-flow that this deal will have along with the unexpected expenses that may come up? 

Private Money is simply money from a non-institutional source...such as someone lending out of their personal IRA or from their savings. 

DSCR will help if you are tapped out of conventional loans and you don't qualify for a traditional loan based on your personal DTI.

Is your $15k even enough of an emergency fund for you personally?  

The person in the response above who got crushed by a $5000 repair never did have $100-200/mo. cashflow.

I have no personal experience with them but they are the only company I know of that are built more for self managers and small portfolios. 

However, I have found local property managers to be very helpful in stating whether an area was difficult to rent, what the market rents were, and even personally knowing some of the tenants of buildings I was considering.

(Interesting, because the best guess I’ve seen is that John maybe personally grossed no more than $10 million from this mentorship over a 8 - 9 year period of time).

I personally am interested in creating a long-term rental portfolio but I'd be interested in hearing any strategy, ie. house flipping, short term rentals etc.

@Tim Bergstrom I am a lender with a local bank here in Louisville and an investor personally as well.