Our house is right downtown, within walking distance to town and campus so we never had trouble finding good tenants.

For instance, I imagine you could paint the property yourself and not get in trouble but anything major, for instance that requires a permit, would need to be done by a GC.I would recommend calling some local lenders in your area, find one or two who are familiar with 203k loans and ask them.Cheers!

GOAL: Insulate my mid-long (5-10 years) term strategy (have income producing real estate to pay for fixed living costs + 5K month cash flow for investing) even during a 2008 housing meltdown.I know debt can magnify the creation of wealth, but it can also magnify potential destruction.  

That has a tendency to get you trouble.

For example, a lot of banks in Texas and Oklahoma went under in the 1980s when there was a sudden drop in oil prices and the oil field producers could not repay their loans.

the big issues there........ the government is corrupt as hell. especially in the muskegon heights area. my brother has had no end of trouble with these people. also, other areas of muskegon, such as the city, they hire out their inspections process to a place called safebuilt. these people are worse than the government over there. my brother sells a lot of his houses on land contract. these people simply refuse to accept this as a sale and call his houses rentals. they claim this gives them the right to issue him tickets for repairs needed because he is the " current owner of record". they use a portion of the government system that is outdated and has inaccurate records to claim he is the owner. consequently, he winds up in court all the time with new " violations" on these " rental houses" that he has full proof that he sold years ago. as of yet, he has be able to beat them in court just by proving that he no longer owns them, but he is going to court almost every week with them. i believe they hope he will just give up and pay the fines. that is not gonna happen with him......lol. but, just so you are informed, muskegon may appear to be a good place to invest, but you will have serious hurdles to jump over on a regular basis. 

From the link I am having trouble locating the forms....what am I missing here? 

Trouble doing business with people who are willing to break the law when it's to their advantage....is that you never know when it will be to your disadvantage.To be clear, bandit signs are not a gray area.

I guess I'll just have to try my hand at producing something viable today and determine if that is worth it but I will certainly keep you posted!

@Darren Eady - if it isn't too much trouble I would appreciate a copy of the questionnaire as well!