My biggest takeaway from it is the Mastermind Theory. 

I think we will use the money to buy the biggest lot I can buy and finance the building of a duplex or maybe a triplex, where my family can live and rent out the other 1 or 2 units to other families that will help us pay the duplex/triplex.

You've cleared up my biggest questions though, and I appreciate it.

I'm not sure who mentioned it above, but best-practices may be a better way to  put what you are asking, but I highly doubt you will find any agreement on what's needed and most would say the best practices are really tips for investors, not the companies.So many companies operate so differently and there is little incentive to change what they do or how they do it as long as the buying public is reacting to their offer.  

But the biggest cost I can see would be having to get a securities broker involved.

@Jeff Cagle I have heard that the appraised value of the property sticks with the property, so if the appraisal comes low - the Seller has an incentive to come down and meet the FHA appraisal price or essentially decline to sell to FHA buyers.

Aside from providing the basics (ie. listing tool to get the property published to 10+ major sites, scheduling tool to schedule viewings, tenant screening with comprehensive applications -- pulled reports from TransUnion, which include nationwide criminal background checks + credit checks + eviction history, digital lease creation tool, rent collection tool, and maintenance tracking tool), some services also offer your tenants additional capabilities which makes it an easier sell on your end when getting them to transition over (ie. their ability to report on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus; this can create an added incentive for making sure they pay that rent on time).

We are little by little paying off debt and saving everything we can to make this happen while actively looking at local properties.The biggest issue many investors run into is not calculating all the numbers correctly.

The biggest challenge with getting a non owner conventional loan is that lenders give you 75% of the actual monthly rental income when calculating dti.

The biggest one here is the energy codes.