Help a newbie get started investing + non-traditional financing

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I'm looking to get started with investing in Real Estate. I have one SFR that I invested in through HomeUnion, but I wasn't too happy with the process (they just have unrealistic numbers and charge way too many fees).

I have about 100-150k personally and also have a friend that said I can borrow 500k-1M under almost any terms as long as it's better than a current CD (i.e. ~3% for ~10 years). In other words, I can invest in anything with few restrictions, all cash, and can do something like an interest only loan, balloon payment, etc.

I'm based out of New York, and I don't want to spend all of my hours working on this, as I'm also working on an unrelated business.

I'm probably going to invest at least a portion in some crowd funding sites because those investments seem pretty interesting on sites like crowd street.

I've thought about out of state multi-family homes, but it seems like there's a lot of competition and for someone with little experience and connections it seems like I'll get the bottom of the barrel.

I do like single family homes, but I'm a bit nervous about doing a rehab, etc. out of state, so it kind of takes me back to some of the turnkey rental providers. I guess a big question is how do I finance them. Do I take my friend up on the offer? Do I just go with a traditional mortgage?

Any advice would be much appreciated.