Growing up in Memphis I worked with my father in the construction business building new homes for these large home building companies.

They seemed to have a good set of systems in place.Couture came in second on my list.Edited to add - I'm still very much a noob investor, being in the process of acquiring my first property as we speak.

I can second this. 

.- Secondly, I'd like to start buying Multi- family homes back home in Maine, preferably southern region (Brunswick, Bath, Portland).

They paid over 100K and then find out they bought the second. 1st hasn't been paid for over five years.

The first I would suggest is Brandon Turner's Book on Rental Property Investing and second, I would read his Book on Investing with No or Little Money Down - this will cater directly to your need but first you want the foundation of his 1st book and a little more knowledge (experience) in the REI community.

I am currently renting out a home that i bought with a VA loan, i am about to buy a second home and use the rest of my VA entitlement with.

I see a lot of discussion on flipping splits and have my head around that but when I'm looking at buy and hold rental properties the splits aren't as cut and dry.My second question is what kinds of numbers do you typically look for on deals that you are going to bring an equity partner in on?

Based on 30 seconds of researching comps on Zillow, it would probably list on the MLS at $105K +/- if I decided to sell it today.My next rental property.

In a perfect world my virgin purchase would be a duplex-quad, one unit of which I will live in until I can secure my second deal.