Banks look for who will close, the least pain to deal with and of the buyers who will close who has the highest net.

Actually, I have gotten several good listings over the years from people who had houses that I couldn't buy for whatever reason.On the LLC question - I had one at one time and found it to be a real pain in the butt, so I canceled it.

Or I can call my escrow agent who will put the exact text of my PA in the escrow instructions and send it out directly to the seller.

I'm fresh out of grad school, working as a PA in San Diego and saving up for my first investment property.

As you can see dealing with tenants can be a pain if the right structure isn't in place especially when you start scaling.Options open for real estate investing will mainly depend on capital to start and expectations of annual return versus what kind of headache you are looking at dealing with.

Analysis paralysis is painful.

Ryan - I just went through that pain.

Even with flipping if you use hard money the lender will want skin in the game ( money down and points ) to do the loan.The reasoning is if the rehab gets tough the HML wants it to be painful for you to walk versus just handing it back to them.A good contact for flips is J Scott on here.

There is a way to make a small increase seem "less painful":http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/77245-best-method-of-renewing-leases

It's a pain in the neck, and being a government loan there are a lot of rules and red tape - but if it can give you a huge step up and some equity/cash flow - i'd do it.