That's when she told us that we would lose access to the FB page and weekly coaching calls at 90 days unless we paid $450+/ month to keep that access.

Finding motivated home sellers without a realtor can be challenging, but two effective strategies you can use today are Facebook paid advertising and door-to-door sticky-note delivery.

I am looking at conventional loans, and as you said, scaling becomes very difficult based on the first method of calculating DTI, especially if you are in an expensive market.

If I can borrow money at 6% and invest money to make 20% plus I would do that all day long.2) Without leverage you are setting yourself up for paying more taxes because your depreciation expense cannot fully offset the cashflow. 

These include depreciation and all expense deductions. 

Do they have a rate cap and are escrowing funds to purchase the next cap, which is probably 10x as expensive?

It is also more common in less expensive areas.   

If I have three rental properties in three different states, where are taxes paid?

IF they can win one in a bidding war, plus cover the appraisal gap on top of all of their other expenses.

Hard Money is super expensive.