Odds are pretty good most people with that much skin in the game aren't risking it all to rip off some California dude on a furnace repair lol.

Perhaps, some of the irritation is due to the low cost of homes/inventory in my market, resulting in a trivial amount of commission income upon a successful closing and more importantly, time away from building my real estate business and personal investments.  

Second, this go-between has no liability or skin in the game.

If your skin is that thin this isn't going to work out well when banks toss you and your cockamamie ideas out into the street. 

It was a hard process and I got the financing by the skin of my teeth and mostly because of how savvy my mortgage broker is, to say the least.

You need to have thick skin and the determination to get up after getting kicked to the ground, everyday, for years.

Private lenders typically like the borrower to have skin in the game.

If you are accredited then in my experience there are many other options than Fundrise that have much lower fees, much more skin in the game and more sponsor experience.If you are not accredited, then your options are more limited and maybe Fundrise does or does not make sense for you.

As I understand it, investment properties have a (in most, most instances) much larger down payment/equity/skin in the game requirement vs homebuyers.

I was thinking Option then negotiate with the estate. we do some of this in our distressed work outs.. at the end we prevail but unless your thick skinned and are happy funding litigation then you should be careful.... although to be fair its me suing the other party to either sell to me or sell on the open market.