One friend of mine house hacked a duplex in Pittsburgh, initially making just $75/month after expenses.

Most people I know start with low money down programs so they can get away with a initial capital investment of around $25k but you also need reserves.  

I would still use quickbooks to track the finances in that account snd all rental associated finances (we use it to track are personal finances also). by the way it is worth the cost of paying someone good with quickbooks to do the initial setup.  

And unlike some Midwest markets this positive cash flow is such that it includes realistic sustained expenses.How is this possible when west coast markets have poor initial cash flow?  

Oftentimes my initial consultation call with a potential client runs 1 hr and that still doesn't give me enough time to cover everything about the STR market on O'ahu.  1.  

Several factors indicate the company is not that concerned about efficiency or ease of customer process: the website, a process that seemed to focus on one issue at a time instead of all issues at once, and consistently poor communications and lack of common sense from the loan analyst we were assigned.It started off very well with the initial point of contact, Austin Lornson, who did a fine job of explaining the general refinancing process, responding quickly and thoroughly to our questions.

So the initial appraisal for the refinance was good at the time, but now the As-Is is not gaining traction with buyers.

Yes that’s what I was initially thinking… then I started to structure the deal in my head and it looked a lot more like what you described with a partnership.

(120k total)2nd house we are making a profit of 120k but this  "profit" would literally pay us back for our initial investments into our LLC together we used on the first house ...anyone have any idea how the gov.

I would invest in Sunrise Capital, but I didn't get the impression that they would accept $50K as an initial investment, which I always like to do to try out a new firm (for me) and to diversify geography and risk.