This way, you can borrow against your house, and end up with 20% down for a rental property, without coming up with any cash out of hand.  

Had to get the footers engineered , now he has to pay a engineer , in the mean time it rained again and the sides caved in , they have to be hand dug  back out .

@Timothy YenAs a plan provider, I cannot make a specific recommendation as to a company to work with per BP guidelines.What I can help you do, however, is refine your question.I'll start with the fact that there are only a handful of firms that offer quality self-directed plan services, and experience, quality of communications and responsiveness outweigh geography for the most part.Self-directed IRA's come in several formats offered by different types of companies.

Personally I'm going to try my hand at private money lending in the upcoming year or two, wait for a decline in housing prices, and then take on a buy and hold or a fix and flip.

It's in his hands and court now. 

I run into trouble finding people who are good with their hands to fix things.I currently have someone but he charges a lot.Does anyone have any tricks for finding good workers who don’t charge too much? 

Since early this year, I have been absorbing books, forums, podcast and whatever other materials I can get my hands and ears on in regards to Real Estate investments. 

The areas where not as much property changes hands or developers build to hold generally means there is a stronger consensus for the long term viability of the area.

Have the residents put a set amount into a common use pool, like $25  a month for TP, dish and hand soap, etc.5. 

If that was in my area we would crawl on hands and knees over miles of broken glass to get anything near that!