They nickle and dime you to death with fees, and they have (what I thought of at the time as significant) account minimums for business accounts.

Of course, I didn't see a dime of that money.

I don't want to do over $10,000 worth of repairs the day before they exercise and basically give them a free remodeling on my dime.

Wow @Mary Ann Casey, nickel meet dime!

Some of the options feel like they nickel-and-dime you and it's very early in me using it so it's hard to tell how effective it'll be in terms of reaching the right motivated sellers.

What's even better if the first one you use FHA (use the 203K to renovate the house on the bank's dime) and then use 5% down Fannie Mae for the second one and then start doing conventional loans until they tell you you can't have any more.  

Did a cash out refi and it appraised around 750k... pulled out every dime to purchase my last one. 

You also must understand that once you have made your initial minimum down payment from that point forward you are not spending another dime for the next 30 years.

Enrolled Agents can help you with your tax filings and often have more time to answer your questions without nickeling and diming you to death.

There are a lot of real estate agents out there that have spend a lot of time working with "investors" to never make a dime.