I planned (and still do plan) to put down 25% and have excellent credit. 

What skills do you excel in that you can use in your venture into this market?

If you have any suggestions, please, send me some information or send me to them.

I've seen posters suggest this, but the C corp has always been a real estate investing company.  

Some background about me: I have a full time insurance sales job, so I will most likely be using a property manager (unless you suggest otherwise), I've never rented property before, so I have 0 experience being a landlord.

Any suggestions on common sense banks would be appreciated.

They are all in c class areas and produce very well.If you plan to enter the C class investment world, I would suggest that you have a plan to scale up.

I love reading posts on here but rarely have cause to write, hoping to enlist some of the excellent experience out there!

What do you suggest in this case ?

I suggest making copies of the dec pages of all your policies and emailing them to multiple agencies to compare.