I have heard so many people getting charged the "fees" for signing up for a free CD.

We pay Lightning Docs a $500 annual fee and $500 per loan, which we charge to our borrowers at closing.

There are LCOL cities with low crime rates and HCOL cities with high crime rates.

For all methods you would want to find a market that has strong employment rates, strong income rates for the market, and is a growing or an established market. 

However, prices for a comparable 5-bedroom home in Washington are significantly higher, likely around $1.5M or more, which would mean taking on a new 30-year mortgage with 6+% interest rate and limiting new investment opportunities.2.

You can negotiate a flat fee, or percentage of their profit of any deal. 

Due to the current interest rates, you probably can't live for free, but you can definitely learn how to house hack in that first year, reduced your personal housing costs, learn the rent by room/co-living strategy on-site, and then probably break-even after move out, but most importantly, it is possible to make that work in 2025 with today's rates.It just takes being open-minded and willing to be flexible for the 1st year.  

If you're goal is a long term hold, you're almost certainly going to do well even with a market rate deal in any of those states.

Some people only want 10-20% of their outstanding lines/debt balances available while the other 80-90% to be in fixed rate notes.

As I understand, landlords there cannot charge application fees, security deposits and evictions are VERY challenging.Have communicated with several PMCs and investors in Ohio market and not aware of any real differences from Michigan.