I put in applications for quite a few of the recommended lenders and then selected one I thought would work the best for my current financial situation.

However, I know Dallas has a 30 day policy to register car into the state and it would put me in a tight schedule to find a house in 3 months.

You will then have a few options with that rent money....you can put it into principal or you can start saving it to purchase yet another property.

In reading The Richest Man in Babylon (a must read if you haven't already), it drives home the point that ever dollar is a worker and should be put to work with a specific job. 

If you have 100k to put down you could buy a property in cash in a less expensive market. 

Simply put, vacation rentals are investments, and their prices tend to be a certain multiple of annual earnings (rents). 

Joint Venture is when you just split equity pro-rata on dollars put into the deal.

If you do it anyway, then you must accept that you will probably realize a loss because those people will not respect the time, money or effort you put into a rental property and will just think you're a greedy bastard. 

Depending on your relationship with the person and the trust level you could always offer to let the project manager put cash into future deals to increase their percent of the profit.

Put another way, a $1,000 fridge is 2 months rent for the $500/mo rent and only 20% of one month's rent for the high end place.