A good custodian will be there to support you and provide education every step of the way; you may find you don't even really have the need for checkbook control (also a good option to ensure you're being extra careful following prohibited transaction rules).

That presents a great opportunity, however it is hard to scale when buying everything with cash. 

You really need to buy the right kind of property in the right place.I'm not sure what you mean by type of broker.

The strategy to use is to go knock on the doors of some of the foreclosure properties to see if you can buy the property before its foreclosed on

Cost to acquire is ~100k and I plan on spending an extra 15k on repairs. 

If you had to buy your first investment property again, what would you do differently?

Long term I want to buy and hold. 

I’m putting together a deal to buy a multi-family rental property from my parents in Buffalo, NY.

Not a huge fan of dropping that much to buy the loan down to 4.5% on a rental.

Buy a property with seller financing at a low interest rate and long term and a substitution of collateral clause.