These typically are not reported to credit bureaus and also do not affect your debt to income ratio which frees up your credit for personal loans that you may need in the future as well as does not limit you to the amount of loans that you can have as a buy and hold investor. 

Not much difference in rate, so typically best to include the reno. 

If you are looking for some good meetups I would say NCREIA has some pretty good ones but there are also smaller meetups like the TREIA meetups they typically have every Wednesday, one of my good friends hold a deal exchange every two weeks on thursday.

While HMLs advertise Points & Interest rates, you'll see there are MANY more Fees associated with this type of loan product, in addition to a lien being placed on your property and a short timeline typically to operate within before they foreclose if you're not able to exit/repay the loan.

Or, is there other typical arrangement when you work with realtors under this mode.

Just double checked the exact timing and it was closer to 3.5yrs of ownership but got no - I received no pushback from NACA.

Trying to time the market typically leads to .

This sounds like an LP relationship where you will receive membership interest in the deedholder LLC.

VC firms typically do not do real estate, maybe a family office but that relationship takes a good amount of time to build and as you mentioned they will want to see experience.This is a hard question, but I ask them - what are you bringing to the table?

Worst case scenarios are like you pointed out, or there is a disagreement of the contract and you friend backs out.When you are renting it out, typically the owner (your friend) is responsible for taxes and insurance.