The more experienced investors with more capital are buying apartment complexes and doing syndications (one asked me if I wanted to participate...I passed) in San Antonio or doing commercial RE. 

Luckily mine was zoned commercial and so the regulation didn't effect me and actually helped as it greatly reduced the supply in the market. 

Keep in mind that DSCR loans are how most investors have scaled. whether its residential DSCR or commercial DSCR at 5+ units. personally, i like them better. few reasons why:1. seasoning period is only like 10-30 days vs 60days going conventional2. seller max contributions DSCR is 3-6% where conventional its only 2% max3.

There are 39 states where no license is required to do business purpose, DSCR, P&L, SBA, commercial, self storage, etc type of loan products.

The companies that market themselves as "garage door companies" (residential) also almost always do commercial stuff as well, such as what you are looking at.

I am looking to see if there are ways to get creative with downpayment on commercial loans.

To defer all of your gain, you'll want to trade up in value, replace all the debt (meaning new properties have at least $350,700 of debt), and not take any cash from the exchange (this is boot which = taxable gain).As for replacement property, it just has to be real property - meaning it can be commercial, STR, land, etc!

Those types of properties can bring in good returns, but the management can be intensive, and finding reliable tenants for both residential and commercial spaces might take some work.

@Chris Seveney as a real estate broker, more than a 100 on residential side and ~30 on commercial.

It is not very difficult or complicated to evaluate commercial real estate, there are plenty of good books available that can teach you how, textbooks, online courses, community college classes, even excellent youtube videos etc, and it is actually quite enjoyable in the process to learn.