They are time and labor intensive for the lender, a real pain in the tail.

You would not believe how intensive managing agents is for what little they produce.

These units will probably be management intensive, but 2-5 year tenants sounds pretty good, too.

Unlike residential leases, which while do have some flexibility, are fairly heavily regulated in what you can and cannot require a tenant to do, commercial leases tend to be very freeform and are minimal on the regulations.Look for the following items in the lease:Length of tenancy (how long they've been there and how many times they've re-signed a lease)Length of lease (how many years are left on the lease)Who pays what utilityWhat maintenance is the landlord responsible for versus the tenantAre there any rent escalator clauses for the tenantThe benefit to commercial tenants is typically their willingness to stay in the same location for longer and that they, usually, aren't as time intensive as a residential tenant. 

Eventually I'd like to get into larger multifamily properties that are more capital intensive.

While all other developments went bankrupt and shut down with the crash in 2009, the VR dev continued to grow an average of 6% every year.As has been mentioned already, the cons include relatively high startup costs due to size/quality of the house and furnishings, management intensive, and meeting restrictions. 

Intense kind of guy.

I don't know him personally, but he just won an award for participation in just about every event and intense efforts to educate himself.What I've learned is that you're going to pay one way or another - you can buy mentor up front (it doesn't have to be LU, pick a mentor/program that has exhibited success and had successful students w/ the type of investing you want to do), you can pay by having a longer learning curve, by making expensive mistakes, or by only seeing deals w/ more adverse T's & C's.  

., Basketball, Football, Soccer, Tennis, etc.). 

It's a value add  project so more management intense from up here but it can be done.