Have you read The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing?

Ultimately, free cash flow after setting aside 10% into a repair fund will go to finance more investment properties, etc. 

The ultimate questions are around loan relative to home value and creditworthiness of the borrower (for simple cases; obviously things could differ).  

I know you do not want to hear this however; ultimately you are liable at this point at least on the New York point of view.

Ultimately I ended up using PenFed as the had a lower rate.

Many of us don't have time to deal with bad PM's, but it's a reality of the business, and ultimately a good investment will outweigh the bad PM (as long as it's identified an corrected/replaced early) in terms of long term gain/profit.But that's coming from someone who is by no means an expert....

A good palace to start is the podcasts as mentioned and the Free Ultimate Beginners Guide, under the education tab above.

Ultimately I would like to do some flips to help fund the purchase of some of the buy and hold properties but that is way down the road for me at this point.

We plan to buy, rehab and hold SFH or MFH for cash flow with an ultimate goal to have several mixed use units WAAAY down the road. 

Before you even start investing:Do you have an emergency fund minimum 3 months, preferably 6 such that if the wheels came off everything you could survive?