They are more flexible, no argument there, but no way am I personally willing to give up locking in historically low 30 year fixed rate mortgages whose terms cant be touched or matched with commercial lending.

A M2M will afford you, as the landlord, maximum flexibility and control over your investment.

Flexible, easy to set up and you're not tied to hunting down your money.

You might even meet some good contacts and learn some key lessons.That genre or work along with the reading up on REI and podcast listening would seem ideal preparation if a more formal internship does not arise.

It doesn't take too much more than a 15 year mortgage payment to prepay your 30 year down to 15 years, and for that added cost you'll have more flexibility in the event of financial hardship. 

. :-)When a tenant makes life easier for me, I'm inclined to be more flexible.

In my situation, I would at least be able to be flexible and if it took months to hear back it wouldn't be a problem.

The key here is flexibility.

Finally, having 50 years of experience is nice, but it also means that, unless you are that one flexible rainbow sparkle unicorn, over the years you probably build up some biases and callouses which might not necessarily be in tune with 2016.

In this case, I was glad to have got one, and super glad the guy was flexible with his time.