After 5 months we had a bad water leak under the house.

I believe sometimes a bad experience is more reflective of the individual than the company. 

Was wondering if anyone knows a guy/girl that can't help me acquire sed property off market for a better price. 

Whether you consider that good or bad depends on whether you are a buyer or seller. 

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. 

@James Wise you're right about California's bad leadership. 

Of course they are going to have bad credit or they would be looking in a better area.Another thing you may want to consider to drive more applications is to not charge the application fee.

If you start a JV in name but do not give your partners proper control and decision-making rights and the deal goes bad you open yourself up to serious consequences which can lead to SEC violations with extremely high fines.Lastly, you can offer the project up to investors who have no voting or control.  

Quote from @Josh Lansberry: You will hear a lot of people bad-mouth him, but Dave Ramsey can teach you how to get financially savvy real quick.

@Kristen SnedekerDid you find a good PM or even a bad one for others to know about?