Are they brokers or lending their own dough makes a huge difference.. and there are some good national to semi national ones out there like..

I own a general contracting/home building business up in Toronto Canada, and have been wanting to get into REI, but am priced out of the market up here (and don't care much for $1.4 mil semi-detached homes).

I understand you can look at Zillow and leverage public county tax databases to find semi-accurate property tax numbers with comparables.

I am semi familiar with the area.

There are 3 insurers that write those semi-nationwide.

@Jaron Walling I am semi retired and haven't bought anything in 2 years.

Very good tax climate, and landlord friendly combined with strong economic growth with tech companies like Apple and google building data centers, Tesla is building the semi-truck factory and a exodus from CA of people all point to strong signs of appreciation. 

I have friends who want to semi-retire there.

We have the option of a blind vs semi-blind fund, open or closed, etc. 

Are there any national, or semi-national banks that are known for giving out low rates?