Many groups buy cash flow negative deals and overraise to pay distributions right away. 

I have excellent credit and good paying job approval will not be a problem. 

Our current mortgage terms include a late fee after 5 days, so they’re already paying extra each month and have to split the total monthly payment up between 2-3 payments when they get their pay check.

Now, this would obviously be negatively cash flowing since you would need to pay taxes and insurance.

If your paying cash to buy and rehab then refinancing I get that.. but your still paying for two closing costs.

Now, you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.

My portfolio is not that large and it irked me to pay a bookkeeper so much and still have to do a lot of the work.

When you draw from the equity, you are "borrowing" it from the bank and have to pay interest.If you borrow against the equity at 7% interest and then loan it out at 15% interest, you are earning a positive 8%. 

I don't know if this can be proven or not, but if the appraisal business is slow, an appraiser might choose to be more strict when checking out houses during FHA appraisals because for the deal to close all the issues cited need to be fixed and they pay the appraiser to go back and reinspect.

We started late in life but it's pretty amazing to look back and see what we have created in a short period. 1st stream of income Retirement pay !