And in general, it a challenge to get someone to pull over on the side of the road to your establishment unless you are a national brand. 

I am re-establishing  myself in real estate and I am looking to network and hopefully build some lasting relationships.

Cracks can become established from settling which is normal for older houses.  

I have a few contractors that I would like to establish a working relationship with and had them do some bids for the roof and a fence.  

I checked it out last night and found an REIA monthly meeting for my area that's well established and has a strong community of investors and real estate professionals....and of course frequent BP!

Her partner is already established. 

If you can achieve higher than average returns on the reserve investment you can even reduce the annual amount invested a bit as the return will partially offset the annual amount needed.If you have multiple properties and are still funding up the reserve account amounts, you an borrow a bit from one property to cover costs for another but this approach comes with risks as well.Other ways to off set these costs are to establish lines of credit in advance of needing the money to fund the replacements or borrow against the property(ies) to fund the cap ex, but there is the additional interest expense to consider.Hope this helps.

personally i've never bought a vehicle with a loan but i have had a mortgage once and will need ne for next purchases too as ended up vested in my primary residence, and i can totally relate to the need for renting one's office/businessplace due to the even higher prices of coastal socal commercial properties. but what about the established brokers nowadays that are still renting everything longterm?

No issues.As long as you are not establishing another primary residence (i.e. furnishing another residence and residing there), you will have no issues from FHA.  

New investors such as myself simply do not have the connections that established REIs do, it's that simple.