Most hard money lenders require 10-20% down payment of the purchase price or total project cost.Holding Costs During Rehab: Yes, you'll need to cover carrying costs, including hard money interest, utilities, taxes, and insurance.

you may have to save up until you have enough money to do so - down payment, closing costs, reserves, etc.House Hacking: What Is It, How to Start, and Strategies for Successit's a more powerful way to get started. 

So you can scale that if you want.FHA is for people with poor credit and very little down payment.

To avoid going through the same poor experience, keep reading.Even if someone gives you a referral here, do NOT make the mistake of assuming that the PMC will meet your expectations, just because they met the expectations of the referral source.In our experience, the #1 mistake owners make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.It's often a case of not doing enough research, as they don't know what they don't know!

This is the equivalent of a car salesman pitching the "monthly payment" of a car instead of the actual price of the car.

Let your criteria do the filtering for you.Regarding retention and renewals, the only time I have asked people to leave is when they have had rent payment issues and/or damaged the property. 

However if you have enough reserves, 6mo or greater then I'd say chance it but a couple of missed payments from the tenants and you have to foot the payments out of your own pocket.I'm all for taking risks but I think you really need to evaluate the age of the major systems so you don't get hit with a bunch of cap ex all at once as well as your reserves. 

The only slight red flag was that they only accepted payment via Venmo or wire transfer, but that's how I accepted payment when I was selling lead bundles, so I still thought it was worth a shot.

The metrics are different due to the financing benefits from being <5 units and corresponding down payment requirements.

There are down payment programs for duplexes, i have not searched or tried to do a 3-4 unit property.