This brings me to now, I've taken this approach and have used my own money in lending, but am also bringing in friends and family to take part in these transactions so they can earn way better returns than with CD's.

Atlanta MSA is great and growing, but Multi-Family supply coming on line there both now and through next year is significant, wouldn't this be a better/cheaper deal 1 year from now?

I would suggest focusing on Norfolk over Portsmouth,  its a better market with more appreciation. 

You'll likely pull a few hundred extra dollars and will will get shorter leases that could work better for your traveling.

You can put as little as 3-5% down and still legitimately claim the property as a primary residence which gets you better terms. 

There are a lot of ways to crash and burn, so increasing the odds of succeeding long term should be your highest priority. you can always sell your local assets once you're comfortable managing rentals and ready for a market that better-suits your criteria. btw, kudos for being self-aware of your limitations.

There is usually not much that compares with what we offer, so we only compete apples to oranges, so incentives are not a good tool for us.The types of tenants we want (multi year) also respond better to an adjustment in rent than an incentive.

So you should make sure he does better than that so it is good for both of you.   

My state has a good court website where I can better do my own background checks for free so that isn't an issue.

If you want to grow further sites, it will go better with financerelationships if you already have a track history and are in thebusiness.B.