Yes, an exhaustive knowledge would be nice, but I was hoping that's what a professional forum like this could help me with.I don't feel it's fair to tell a person to exit the stage just because they're not 100% educated. 

My recommendation is to exhaust your 10 residential mortgages then once you get past that start buying commercial properties using an LLC to take title.

It would exhaust a material portion of my own liquidity for the money down and closing/inspection costs, but I'd have a much more affordable loan than HML and this 2-stage approach seems simplest to me. 

Most get to 13-mile (in marathon speak) exhaustion/frustration and start painting over mold or putting too much on an electrical circuit.   

I just wanted to make sure that I'd exhausted the more conventional or known paths to coming up with a down payment for an investment that size.

Everyone who wants to pay half and get double can move right along...hahaThat being said, it's going to be the larger deals that give me enough commission to build seed capital for my own investments and ultimately free me from running my exhausting (but profitable) service business.

Have you exhausted all your options? 

Then they spent half a day troubleshooting the new 3 electrical switches they were installing for lights & exhaust fan. 

Wow @Ross Denman, that was exhausting guide.

As a rule I generally assume expenses to be 50% of the gross income for my first look evaluation no matter what expenses the seller reports (unless its more than 50%, then I will use their number.)From there you can get into more detail on what type of capital expenditure budget the property might need depending on what physical condition and what strategy might be best.As far as due diligence once the property is under contract, or maybe before in some situations you will need a much more exhaustive list.