HI There Greg.The VA program is a great place to start using to purchase your first property since it has significant benefits like as low as 0% down and no monthly mortgage insurance, however its important to note there are downsides to the VA program too.Depending on how you buy for the long term (primary or rental property)or your intended future use of the property you may want to structure your loan differently to achieve better results (ROI/cash on cash/etc).The VA program requires you to have served the armed forces at one time or another.Let me know if you have any questions I can help with. 

You have no downside.

The downside to that pic is that by the time we got to that spot it was too late in the day to hike into that valley.

The downside from MY point of view is I would rather concentrate on finding the next deal and getting it under contract, not spending time selling a finished project.

If that is the case, I suspect, after wholesaling a couple of these, I will morph into flipping them.Here's the downside: I live in the Sacramento area of California...

If it were me I'd need a rock solid income property with almost zero downside and high DSCR on the 7 year note. 

Downside is that you will still be responsible for the initial payments and depend on your tenants to pay you their share. 

If the percentage didn't change, there wouldn't be a downside for you, only the buyer.

My question is since the renovations were done without permits, what are my downside risks?

The downside is that Sec8 does inspect every year and typically requires some repairs.