A mortgage broker can help you find lenders who might be open to smaller loans and can guide you through the process.

You can be good enough at REI that people will give you their money to invest with them giving you a cut of the profits, or wholesaling where you find a buyer to assume your contract before closing. 

The REI community is super active here and you wont have any problems finding connections.

Where do you even find good investment opportunities?

They are dealing with more lease turnover caused by deaths of residents, high labor expenses for different levels of care (IL / AL / MC), as well as finding employees that want to do this work.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Insurance would cover it, I would pay the deductible, and no assets would be lost.If you are in an area like San Diego where people are more likely to sue, a judge is more likely to find you guilty, and the payout is expected to be higher, you may consider an umbrella insurance policy.

I was hoping to find someone who might want to do a bit of mentoring or something along the lines as i get started.

You could always offer a shorter lease that ends in May/June to give yourself an opportunity to find new tenants or raise the rent to market at that time.I hope this helps and if you ever need any guidance or want to chat about the process of assuming an existing loan, I would love to connect! 

At that point, I will start to make some judgements about growth vs. payoff vs refi, etc.You could use the money to continue to accelerate the payoff of your primary then get a HELOC on the equity to fund the downpayment of a rental property if/when you find one.For me though, I'm making minimal payments on the mortgage and getting the investment snowball rolling as soon as I can.