Yes, it's possible to get an FHA loan with 3.5% down in the city, but your lender is right—there are some tricky hurdles, especially for multi-units.

Quote from @Danielle Levy: Lesson learned: provide the full story up front and you'll get better advice.If you feel there's a case, put together all the evidence.

What would you do in my shoes I don’t invest there so take this with a slight grain of salt but I’ve heard multiple stories of basically this exact scenario someone getting offered a big payday for something in Cumberland, rejecting it & always for some reason (house burned down, block got worse, sheetz decided they actually didn’t want someone’s land for a car wash after all) always selling for like 10-20k and regretting not selling. 

What I've had clients do in the past is make an offer without a financing contingency where they tell the seller that they are getting a mortgage to close the deal, but also provide proof of assets to show that they can/will close by liquidating the assets if the loan gets declined.

If you expect to get every penny out of every deal you are going to be disappointed.

Very exciting you are looking to get into the RE investing world.Thanks for the interest in Rent To Retirement.

Who else would have the knowledge to lead others than a 33 year old former football player; who wrote a book that is being hocked by Bigger Pockets.Maybe you can get Nails (Lenny Dykstra) to write a book that BP can sponsor? 

The draw is actually this coming Fri for 2026The market for STR seems saturated in popular/touristic regions, however, if you have a unique property and offer affordable pricing, you may get descent occupancy. 

If interest rates drop, a ton of people are going to get in and real estate prices are going to go up a ton if you’re back in bidding wars.

You would need to do a detailed write up of both you and your brothers situation to get any useful info from here.