You need to be in a market with high demand or the time and carrying cost between breaking ground and profitability will simply be too long and will kill the deal. 2 - Zoning. 

A 15yr payment is a smarter financial decision, but you need to have the ability to carry a higher mortgage expense.

@Justin Lee Taylor  How much would your costs be (carrying costs, repairs, etc)? 

@Jacob RzewnickiAny chance the seller would carry the note on the second one in like a 3-5 year balloon?

That also means then that the original seller who carried your loan will be paid in full upon your sale. 

If so, it would carry serious conditions or collateral.

The benefit of establishing an additional LLC to carry out the operations of your assets is that it can carry the majority of the high-liability operations (paying contractors, property management, collecting rent, interacting with guests/renters,) but you wouldn't end up placing any actual assets in it other than the money it requires to carry out those operations.

The way we see it we carry a higher possible profit margin if we finance through a bank but also carry more risk.

As a white kid from the suburbs, I realize that I will be in very unfamiliar turf as I begin my career as a landlord.So, other than buying a gun that I carry at all times, never going to the properties at night, and screening tenants beforehand to make sure they don't have serious criminal records, what else can I do to ensure that I stay safe while managing these types of properties in bad neighborhoods?

But you have to figure out how much debt you’re willing to carry.