For down payment, plan to need 30-40%.

Eventually, after finally admitting he could not obtain a loan, he failed to return my capital, and completely stopped responding just long enough until the banks were unable to reverse any payments.

Quote from @Charles Fay: Hello all, first time posting and wanted to ask for your advice.currently in the military awaiting a 9-12 deployment within the next 6 months.I will have ~150k savings after deployment, 85k before, with no debt, payments or anything other than basic bills, 750+ credit.

If you are very conservative purchase a fixer upper so you can force equity and hopefully have a low enough payment so that you can LTR the property or even sell for profit should the STR avenue not work. 

You’ll also want to know how they handle rent collection and late payments and if they can provide references from other investors they work with.A good investor-friendly agent should have a strong network of professionals like contractors, inspectors, and lenders to help with your investments.

Project phases typically divide payments into an initial deposit and subsequent installments.Depending on the project scope, you can divide the payment into milestone payments.

Quote from @Kevin Sobilo:Monthly Rent + Monthly Debt Payments <= Gross MONTHLY Rent * 45% Obviously I made a typo.

It looks like according to the county site (sbcounty.gov) they require all renter payment go to the active owner. 

For a sample, consider a $295,000 project with a down payment of 5% and a mortgage payment of 7% interest.Good luck!

I was thinking I could put down the 50k so he had enough to pay off the heloc and make payments to him for the remainder to be paid off in 10 years with new renters.