I hope you were able to catch some reds and sea trout in the bay.  

However The barrier to entry in the REI teaching business is very low and a lot of bad players join the game.What you describe led me to come up with Ned's Rule of Gurus.The quality of an REI course is inversely proportional to the price

Quote from @George Red: Hey @Steve Johnson, I found your website but it does not explicitly mention HVAC and I actually was about to ask on the forum if anyone had a recommendation for a furnace repair job... not a big job, one unit in a duplex not working properly.

I wasn't sure if asking my FHA lender about switching it to commercial will raise red flags.

I know, there are plenty of red flags there, but I do believe it is worth the risk when I consider how happy it makes my wife, how life-changing it will be for the family, how minor the financial impact will be on me, and how it gives me the opportunity to practice the steps of real estate investing with forgiving tenants.Finally, I am going to attempt to self manage as nothing comes close to cash-flowing if you include PM costs.

One of the biggest red flags I have as a lender (who lends my own money as well as secondary market loan) is when a rookie tells me there goal is to buy 10, 20, whatever properties in the next year. my next question is how many do you own currently?

Then there's misaligned incentives players in the construction industry may make more money the longer a project takes to get completed. 

People probably do this all the time, but skirting the law and subject to red tag if the city finds out. 

On the other hand if they are a sponsor that is experienced in stopping a skin in the game, that's a huge red flag for me.c) how open to scrutiny are they?

Housing shortages have more to do with boomers living longer and holding on to their large homes and provincial red tape.