Contests can be pretty tough in my experience, even with hundreds of dollars on the line.

There will be winners and losers, and those that don't get the benefits will likely face tough questions about whether they can continue to live here. 

Buy for 2MIL, put 1MIL into it, sell for 4MIL. once you go outside that basic structure its really tough to make any money. low end properties are way overbought, leaving no margin for rehab.

Without getting too detailed about my circumstances, I am in a tough spot.

Assuming it is, it'll be tough for your lender to give a yes/no until they have non-hypothetical numbers to work with.

Syndication can be a good source of diversification  for investments but otherwise unless you are trying to learn syndication for yourself it can be tough to beat the returns on your own deals.

Tough break.

Unfortunately you are in a tough place.

My day job takes up so much of my time that I probably wait too long to get tough. 

They were out of town and I had no patience this was mid 80s when it was dog tough getting deals done.