I used a combination of leveraging my business line of credit, HELOC and partnerships for my first couple deals before adding in private lenders. 

The main differentiator that I have seen is: 1) Asset class: Retail rarely even dipped in price and it's difficult to even say that it had a downturn.

This often leads to frustrated tenants, and unhappy tenants rarely stay long.

I rarely have a balance over $20k, and more typically $10k on my personal ones.

This looks like a combination of interest rates and just relatively high prices still (e.g. most duplexes I've seen start at around 600k).

Also in your strategy lay out the combination of cash flow and or appreciation.  

The combined transactional costs alone between the purchase and sale are going to be north of 10% of the transaction value.

We bought it for $225k with a 3.125% mortgage and 1) are interested in keeping it as our first rental. 2) We are thinking about using some of the equity (maybe $50k or less as a HELOC to combine with existing cash for our next home down payment that we can convert to a HELOAN through our credit union).

I'm using a combination of MLS comps provided by realtor, redfin, and backflip analysis tool.  

., and rarely present an offer.