Then I hear news that Freddie will no longer allow lenders to contribute grants to reach the 3% down payment requirementI am looking for suggestions to overcome the down payment hurdle.  

Although I understand his frustration I do feel he is being unreasonable.

My wife and I are very new to investing in real estate and are currently at the analysis paralysis hurdle we still have to get past.

I've seen way to many multi family properties just get into that death spiral of a slum lord and horrible tenants and it's just one band aid after another until finally the owner extracts whatever they can and exits.I personally would want to be buying something at a little lower price, perhaps redeveloping, etc.Build value rather than extract value.If the assumptions above mentioned check out and you're happy with those returns I don't see a major hurdle ----  big however though is that you're only outperforming your cost of capital by maybe a percentage point?

@Phyllis Effah I don't know if they'll look down on you, but it's a hurdle you have to overcome.

This seems to be a hurdle for people who are just starting out or don't have much time for face to face networking.

My opinion, this is a super unfortunate incident, but based on the description, the tenants didn't do anything unreasonable to cause the issue and it's not unreasonable that they didn't report a toilet handle occasionally getting stuck.

The biggest hurdle, as you've probably heard, is the cost of owning here.

There are easy ways around that self employment hurdle for non owner occupied properties.

There are going to be a few hurdles that you will have to jump through.