A lot of out-of-state investors are using hard money lenders that fund 100% of the purchase and 100% of the rehab, meaning most deals only require around $10K out of pocket, which makes it much easier to scale without draining all your savings.

Quote from @Stephanie Deppe: I’m interested in opening a self directed IRA to invest in real estate—perhaps as a private money lender or funding my own property acquisitions.

As a broker, my biggest pet peeves are hard money lenders circumventing to my clients, not being upfront about fees, asking for a commitment fee prior to issuing loan docs, and "matching" my broker fees, even though I underwrote the file, got the client, and did all of the processing work. 

Institutional private money is really no different than Hard Money except maybe they can close a little faster but sometimes it is a title issue and you can't anyway.  

It’s also smart to outline how rent is prorated and any penalties for early termination to keep things clear for tenants and insurance purposes.

I typically use private money for my investments and BRRRR them.  

Wasn’t smart of me to jump into real estate this way with no due diligence and not much $ to my name.

You might find private money or a potential partner is sitting right in your contact list.All the best!

There's a huge amount of Spanish money investing there and I'd have thought, logically and because of what I've read and heard, that it's the same in the Valencia/Alicante region.

I have already talked to hard money lenders and got the pre approval.