@Bryan PhamA lot depends on whether you're looking for debt or equity investors or a combination.

What are the license requirements to be a debt or equity broker for multifamily deals nationwide?

If you are, either get rid of your debt or marry someone who's much better with money than you are and give that person the responsibility to sign off on the major financial decisions of your partnership.

Renting out a home that has not been through probate can work when the surviving relative is unable to to handle the probate, the debt, or the taxes on a home.

And whatever you do, do not take on any new debt or large car payments before you get your home.

For 5 units or more you will need a commercial loan that will require 25-30% down, but you would not have to owner occupy one unit.Generally speaking, for a residential mortgage you will qualify for 2-4 times your annual income for any mortgage, depending on your credit score and level of debt, or your debt to income ratio. 

we can do alot of the work now ourselves and did most of the renovations on side A ourselves. keep an active updated file easily accessible to send to the lenders with last 3 yrs tax returns/most recent pay stubs/ references/ debtors information (acct. number and address, pay offs) / copy of DL etc. ...to keep things going and to close quickly

Living paycheck to paycheck, trying to snowball my credit card debt.What have you done to get out of debt, or any real estate strategy to help get you out of the hole?

Second, Illinois is a notoriously difficult and time consuming state to foreclose, not only because it is a judicial foreclosure state, but also because of the inherent debtor bias of the judiciary.

For example, I think we are late cycle, so I lean toward the safest part of capital stack which is debt (or debt free equity).