With enough knowledge you can make a educated decision on which approach you take.My experience:I personally don't sign up for any program who take you aside during events and try to sell packages that is just blatant sales strategy.Once you sign up there is every attempt to make you sign for their programs for bookkeeping, registered agent, LLC or corp setup fee which have ridiculous even with platinum membership.Basic standard structure they suggest to take advantage of multiple deductions can be easily achieved by proper education or work with a good firm like https://wcginc.com  who is local to you.A umbrella C-crop to manage all other LLC properties and take advantage of many tax deductions that are not available with a llc, its also used to take losses up to 100K as startup expenses and dissolve the entity after few years.Few LLC entities for investing in Real Estate, etc preferably in Wyoming or Nevada ( you can find many companies online who can do this for $150 compared to anderson $1500-$3000) , they will claim they have a secret Operating agreement which is bogus.They certainly try to take advantage of tax loopholes and claim to be smart people, my view they are just taking advantage of numbers as per their own statements.

You can easily look them up on https://nmlsconsumeraccess.org/If they are a commercial lender, you may want to check for google reviews

People are easily impressed and naive, especially the younger folks. 

You can't easily determine whom has paid and who hasn't.  

The common areas "look" like the pictures, but the house could easily use another $80,000 in renovations.

What I was trying to say in my response is the units will be easily move in ready on delivery of the property. 

But also with low debt or free and clear property that they can easily access any time in the future with a cash out refinance.

I generally recommend if you're not going to buy a property in the city/market where you currently live, the next best place to look is where you have family (and presumably a place that you'll visit relatively often and easily).What is your price point and are you looking for turn-key properties or something along the lines of a "fixer upper", assuming you buy in Peoria or a similar priced Midwest market?

But I would think they all can easily run the comps so you know the numbers you are aiming for in any given neighborhood/block/property. 

You could very easily find yourself broke and homeless with no way to recover.