When we met and started talking price, he was asking above my strike price (if I was purchasing with a traditional mortgage), so I told him I could only offer what he was asking IF he was willing to hold the note with a payoff in a couple of years.

I would want to see market data that says most renters would prefer open shelves vs. traditional cabinets.

My day job is in a field where traditional big data solutions (Hadoop on computer clusters) isn't even efficient enough, which has put the focus on resilient data structures (RDD's) and Apache Spark as a foundation for alternative solutions.

I don't do many traditional quick flips anyore because of that.

I know they're different than traditional loan packages and I'm not nearly as familiar with the process.

But to put down 25%(almost 30k) plus closing costs is way too much cash to put out.I tell people all the time, "Act like you are broke, but want to get into real estate investing even if you have money"  You have to try to find ways to get into the deal without going the traditional route and spending 35k. 

It is not impossible to find properties that cash flow using traditional financing but it will be tougher. 

This could be good, if the equilibrium is one where, higher capital demanding loans are financed through the securities markets and lower capital demanding loans are financed in more of a traditional portfolio method.  

Also, independent of the FHA 203(k) consultant, I ordered a traditional home inspection.

A traditional lender will take all other factors into account, and if they don't like what they see then they simply deny the loan.