@Madeline Burke I get the idea but there are a lot of people I would rent to that I would not loan money to!  

I have no idea if that's how you use it on other sites :)

If he still wants out is a Lease option an idea for this situation?

I was hoping I'd find support for whether or not it would be a good idea to get hard money for a 25% down payment, traditional financing for the remaining 75%, with all profits (rent less both loan payments-HML and traditional financing, prop tax, insurance, and 10% maintenance fund) going to the hard money lender under the loan is paid off. 

My idea of getting into real estate investing was coming up with 20% of your own money (that's 60k where I live for a low end property), traditional residential mortgage, net maybe $200 a month if I was lucky and repeat the process when I came up with another 20% until I had maybe 40 properties.

And @John Kent had a good idea, too, to try to conserve  as much cash as possible so you can use that as a down payment on a straight rental property.

Does anyone have ideas on how to find properties that are not on the MLS yet besides Craigslist that are reliable?

I can't answer your question about the land bank, but getting a license is probably not a bad idea.  

Any idea where to look?

Feel free to reach out about any questions or to bounce ideas off of each other.