The story behind Rommel here is that he was in a very abusive household with some bad guys.

pack your trips with showings and meetings.if it's not worth it to you to spend some time and money doing that... then don't spend tens of thousands of dollars on a property.

Does the new partner want to spend six months of the year in two of the units with their family or would they rather it purely be an investment.

I know when I was an active Broker my SOP  was get listing open escrow with buyer to be determined and order the preliminary title report prior to spending money on marketing someones property..

A client of mine recently invested there and raves aboutt the ease of finding solid contractors who stick to the budget.One piece of advice: before jumping into any market, spend time understanding the local economy, demand drivers (like job growth and population trends), and the landloard laws.

Overall, you're spending $25k in extra costs and a monthly pmt that's $500 higher to keep $50k in your bank account. 

Little to no rehab/capex spending was needed.

I'm sure they also spend significantly more time on their role, than you do in yours....or at least their time spent is more constrained where yours can be remote/on the road. 

I spend extra for the the supply house versions and rarely have issues during warranty period.

My mark up is always lower than the direct lender because I don't spend money advertising during the Super Bowl or buying a private jet for my CEO, and we don't have layers of management we need to pay.