I have been learning how the process works and there are a lot of resources for how to interview a sponsor and review the deal, but how do you initially access the deals to review?

I've seen many investors get burned because they failed to understand their hard money loan terms/rates, even if they did acquire what should have been a home run deal. 

I have seen studies that show that when the utilities are paid by the tenants themselves directly, that the costs are reduced by 20%. 

Then when you see some tractions or close some deals, you can reinvest in your website.

More than likely you would need to give up around 70-80% of equity and own a minority - some deals would allows you to buy it back at a set price as well. 

My understanding is that if you've given the neighbor written notice of the need to maintain / remove the tree, if it falls it's considered an act of nature (high winds) and you have to deal with it.

You can use a SQ FT format to guess rehab but that is only good to initially look at a deal.

Usually the type of work has to be dealing with the real estate itself, not just providing a service that is applied to a part of the house/building. 

That was an excellent non-answer to my question, Skyler. hihi :)No they are not all the same. some are only interested in dealing with conventional purchases other are as you say better at handling assignments or double closes, some are commercial specialty, etc....A investor friendly one would be, at least from my point of view, one that understands there may need to be some last minute wheeling, dealing, and adjustment made to close a deal, understand what needs to be done and do not freak out about creative deals.Maybe my understanding or thoughts are wrong but that's what I meant by investor friendlyregards :) 

Now, you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.