If you were to buy direct from the owner you will get great deals!

I didn't mean to imply that someone would consider hiring FT help at 10 units, but I guess I was wondering what the hypothetical point would be in which an owner might even consider it.

Hence I decided not to go with them.

Once you have a handle on that then you can decide from that point. 

With current interest rates, and they are at least 1% higher with potentially additional points for non owner occupied property, it is hard to find properties that will allow for positive cash flow after paying the mortgage, if you are looking for money for the down payment from a private lender, those are normally at higher than market and I am not sure it would be possible to pay it off.... please remember you need to take into account that you may not have a tenant for a certain amount of time, a tenant may stop paying rent, or you will have a big ticket item to fix, so I would wait if I were you and save to have enough for the down payment and closing costs and perhaps some money set aside for repairs. you also want to make sure that you have your own emergency fund outside of the money needed for the investment property because life happens ....

The only other options I can see are A) your mom partnering with you rather then selling the property to you - you become 50% owner and bring the funds and management to the rental while she provides the existing equity as her contribution; or B) your mom lending you the rehab cash out of her personal funds while also seller financing the house to you. 

MattIRA sells and owner finances the property for 200k and gets 30k down payment.

The combination of its growing tech & healthcare sector, long-term resilience to climate change, and relative affordability makes it an interesting place to start our real estate journey.I spent a big part of my career in hospitality real estate consulting at a Big 4 firm, but I left to explore new opportunities and decided it was finally time to take the leap into real estate investing.

If you can't make it work with a commercial loan don't do the owner finance deal even though it is great.  11. 

You can get a normal owner occupied home loan to do this.