@Bryan Hope, as long as you live in the property you buy you can use a traditional residential loan.  

My second purchase was the only one that I had very reluctantly resorted to a loan from my parents, only due to timing constraints on closing (and numerous failed attempts to obtain traditional financing) and not wanting to liquidate my stocks portfolio.

This has required a degree of creativity not encompassed by the definition of a traditional real estate agent.

Everybody will start shouting about "piercing the veil" and how LLC's aren't any good...but I believe that when operated properly LLC's should provide as much protection as a traditional corporation.

You'll burn through that 3k in no time if you do things traditionally.

You can definitely get a loan on 4 plex through FHA but the qualifications are more stringent than traditional loans.

For a traditional, established cash flow market, you can't beat Indy being a comfortable drive away.

If you are going with traditional lender, you are probably looking at 25% downpayment. 

These seem to be geared toward traditional transactions, and I can't see how they apply to the creative transactions.Other than that, this is how I am thinking the flow of the transaction goes:  find the deal -> "tie up" with contract -> find buyer -> sell contract to the buyer for a profit. 

As much as I don’t like tradition education... being an engineer was what got me a good job to get the starting capital to be a buy and hold investor and launching the rest.