Utilize the FHA loan, put little money down, and keep the rest of the capital you have to either invest in the property for strategic reasons and/or have liquid in the bank for your next opportunity, while you live at a discount or for free on the hack.For your expenses, understanding the basics on a rental is a good start(vacancy, maintenance, capex, PM, insurance, taxes, etc), but with it being a small multi-family, knowing your utility situation is going to be critical.

They KNOW what they are doing, KNOW where they are headed, KNOW their business, and have a passion, commitment, and focus to multiple facets in their lives.  

As I am still a newbie investor, I am starting to understand critical qualities of a lender.

We don't have a lease renewal fee at our property management company, and we're already doing inspections throughout the year, so we do not do a specific inspection during a lease renewal unless we have an area of concern @Ann B.Before offering a lease renewal it's critical to do market research to make sure your rent increase is on par for the market.

The most effective way to determine the time needed to execute these functions is to run a critical path analysis that lays the tasks out along with the parties that will be employed to do them and the processing time needed for the consultants you will engage and the city/town/county process they will be subjected to.The critical path will inform you as to which due diligence functions are sequential in nature and or which ones can or should be run in tandem.

You are going to put 3.5% down, and then no one talks about the part where you have to create 21.5% more equity to refinance out of FHA into Conventional so that you can use FHA again and not get stuck.The exit strategy is critically important, before you even ink that purchase contract. 

For those of you that have, was it critical to getting your rei career started?

Hint, FICO score is not the critical factor.

@Stephen Brown That is a very good point you mention about there being demand within submarkets, so that's where having that local knowledge becomes so critical.

Reviews can be as important as the property itself, so just know that there will be an initial period where you'll need to gain some momentum.Please let me know if you'd like any assistance with finding/analyzing potential deals or any other facet of the process.