That way you'll have your 20-30% for the down payment and the seller gets his money faster than option #1.As an aside, his expense ratio seems pretty low to me.

Instead of working with larger more traditional lenders, I thought building a longterm partnership with a smaller local bank would help build my empire faster and more efficiently.

Sure, you'll evict your first tenant or two from lack of experience in screening, but while you are making a mistake here by going bigger quicker, the rest of your portfolio is growing faster more than making up for the mistakes and missteps. 

Would you agree with this strategy or should we focus on the bedrooms first so that the kids could get "settled" faster? 

As expected, I did not perform great on the baseball field, so I decided to take a healthy redshirt (which is essentially sitting out of the season while still remaining with the team and practicing/lifting weights).

It sounds like the first one came off and because they didn't say anything, the weight of the door is now causing problems with the second one. 

The lower the DP, the faster you will usually recover it...as long as there is positive CF. 

They don't overfire the stove, and keep it within the safe operating range,  this is tricky because softwoods like pine can take off faster, and well seasoned Oak will output 2 - 3 times as much heat per piece of wood as softwoods / other hardwoods do.4.)

Will you take the time to teach yourself or would you learn much faster with coaching?

Rates have gone up faster than most of us have expected and cap rates are certain to follow.