Meet with a local banker & schedule a time to talk with a mortgage broker, they'll give you at least a baseline of what kind of down payment options and rates are out there.After that, if you're still wanting to research more creative options, do some looking into seller financing (a very hot topic with good, and bad, advice out there), look into private lenders, and commercial financing options.If you're wanting to live in 1/4 of your quadplex, then conventional residential loans may in fact be your best option as you can purchase that with a fannie/freddy loan with very low down, and use up to 75% of the income from the property toward your own income. 

Quote from @Zongfu Li: An agent named Mathew Dial contacted me for loan opportunity and told me how flexible and how easy they can provide bridge loan lending and conventional lender.

Quote from @Leah Miller: Hello to all,Need some lending advice.Was supposed to close on a property on Thursday, with a Fannie Mae conventional loan.

•Purchase another property in San Diego with a conventional loan.

They are there on time reliably, do a good job managing inventory/off site laundry, and generally do a good job cleaning overall.

Get a conventional mortgage.

I've heard stories on the podcast of financing 75% conventionally through the bank and basically doing seller financing on the down payment, so 25% to them.

many houses in the midwest, for example, are very old and need major rehabs.i personally think out of state investing is more difficult than advertised, and much more difficult in the current investing environment, with: prices high; interest rates high; tremendous demand for inventory, by both investors and retail buyers; and good PMs, contractors, etc. booked up.here's a really thoughtful thread with the experience of another CA investor and lots of different responses:https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/12/topics/1215726-break...and here are some threads about how it can very easily go wrong:https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/1159104-overl...https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/963/topics/1195280-expe...https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/1160450-run-i...https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/1137397-balti...finally, you also said you "don't have a lot of money to start with." 

Overall, sounds like there is more inventory coming on line in 2025 in some major markets so wondering what some of those leading indicators of a "bottom" might be.

Conventional financing. 5% down.