Do your magic touches to it and add sweat equity.  

Lots and lots of work and sweat.  

I am a sweat equity guy so I can do a lot of work myself.

And, for those people who have more time than money, they can put in sweat equity into directly owned real estate.

At my point in life everything I own is both a cash flow superstar and appreciating nicely, because I'm invested in growing, popular areas.If I was just starting off now, I'd probably be aiming for value-add in good areas where I could either live there while improving the unit(s) - ie a duplex, triplex - or where I could trade sweat equity for profit, or both.

.: @Jordyn Ohsnot enough info to helpbut if you're using a HELOC for the down payment AND getting a loan, then you're probably negative cash flow given that's 100% leveragei would never do that unless i were going to refinance in the short termHi Nicolas, Heloc for down payments, but my own cash and sweat equity for the rest.

I wanted to be able to put in some sweat equity and learn some of the skills needed in this trade.

In my mind anything can be fixed and I don't sweat many problems.

Direct mail will cost a little bit of money, but if you do a lot of the work yourself, it is mainly sweat equity. 

Or you can look at it this way - you've learned nothing and still have money sitting in your checking account wasting away and I just put another $3500 against my mortgage yesterday without breaking a sweat or taking anything out of savings.