It's harder to finance good properties right now for obvious reasons, and if you go NNN or DST then you need to be very clear about the costs (upfront and ongoing) that might eat at your returns. 

This cuts down on the back-and-forth driving, which can eat up a lot of time.

If you plan on keeping it as a rental - and you might want to talk to some experienced Clevelanders first - then you'll have to eat the $30k as well to make it work.

I am certainly afraid of the unknown, which would include those fees eating up the equity that I have built to date.

At a standard brokerage, we have to design how were eating their lunch and what's left. eXp put's out there they will give away the lion's share of brokerage comm split's, making it available to those "up-chain" of that agent.

Holding a flip long enough to reduce rate to cap gains rate means you’ll likely have unproductive capital, which may be more costly than eating ordinary gains taxes.

I would think it would eat up a big chunk if not all of your buy-down.

But inherently in this syndication dog-eat-dog world, at the end of the cycle someone would be wiped out.See this is the reason I personally stayed away from commercial RE, incl. multi family.

Trying to be an investor when you don't have personal finance discipline is like going to a cross fit gym when you drink beer and eat fried garbage every night. 

It is totally different if all you have is $100K and the fee eats up 18% of that.