The smaller commercial lenders I've talked have asked that I have 6 months of mortgage payments per property to act as a "buffer" prior to lending on a second one. 

If it's non owner occupied you'd need to do a conventional loan which comes with a 25% down payment.

I know for a fact that the borrower will never make payments. 

So I would therefore need to purchase a house worth more than $70,000 using the $20,000-25,000 as the down payment and reserves for the purchase. 

How much of the $3,000 do I use for the purchase price.Do I need to collect more money to help with the down payment or have them do it for themselves?

Great tenants, want to keep this one.four properties on a business line of credit, interest only, the interest rate just increased to 6.5%. owe 200k, monthly payment around $1,074.  

It's come time for me to sort out my insurance and I thought I could set it up on monthly payments and this might be a good way to help me start building a credit rating, but it seems that in general, insurance companies won't report to credit agencies unless it's negative. 

They were to get their own loan in a year, after raising their credit score from 540 with payments via EFT from his paycheck.

I think if you intend to engage the services of the real estate agent later in the transaction - in other words, there is an assumption of payment - it would be fine to reach out for comps.

I would save my money for a down payment for a home or investment property.Below is link I posted about sacrifice for down payment.https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/12/topics/511...Terrence