If you buy less or take cash out you will pay tax on that amount. 

Will they be doing other types of work like getting through the financing, becoming the guarantor, finding the deals, crunching the numbers, doing the accounting, or are they just simply doing less work?

You drop them off to the court clerk, pay the court fees, and in about 4 - 6 weeks, the sheriff calls you and says, "Today's the day to change the locks."

Every dime went into a SFH, live-in flip, and my brother was paying $400 to live with me.

I got tired of paying to live in other people’s homes.

I'd suggest not paying anyone for mentorship.

Usually when a landlord cannot find qualified tenants but are getting a fair amount of inquiries there's an underlying real estate problem and the qualified tenants simply do not want to live in that location.

In future if you are refinancing I would sometimes look to pay a higher purchse price but have seller concessions to bring the price down on paper but not for comp purposes. 

Never should you be paying 2.5 points on an FHA product.

This is very important and can cost you a lot if you don't pay attention to these rules / regulations.