The first purchase is always a huge learning experience.

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. 

The substitute of collateral was more of a scenario where you sold for $155K, and instead of paying off the $88K loan in your scenario, those funds stayed at the title company and were used on a cash purchase happening nearby in date. 

Quote from @Roger D Jones: Quote from @Fred Scott: @Roger D Jones:  Any insights on why the North Carolina purchase in Fund IV makes you nervous?

For an investment property (purchased as an owner occupant), that is insane. 

@Moshe MarcianoI recently helped an investor from Orange County purchase a single family home here in San Diego.

@Mitch Davidson I purchased a property recently and closing in May.

Or buy something that needs some love and some hard money lenders will fund up to 90-100% of the purchase and rehab.

I saw how that proposal is basically her giving me a 0% loan, but at the same time I believe that structure will avoid her taking a large loss (approximately 30k if she accepts a 300k offer).I do not know why she doesnt get a PM, I only share the facts of when she purchased it, the purchase price, and the reasoning she shared with my realtor as to why she is selling after such a short time period.

Now we are mostly scaling our business with larger communities but I've used many different creative finance strategies including seller finance, private lending, hard-money, collateral from other properties, and lease-options.