I'm a soon to be Chicago resident so with your excitement about the industry already, I'm sure I'll be running into you down the line. 

We replaced every window and door in the house, completely re-sided it, put in a brand new kitchen (RTA Cabinets), full tear-off roof replacement (five!

I'd had the assumption that i'd buy a rental using a HELOC on my primary residence, and then financing subsequent rentals with a LOC/leverage on that rental property (something I assumed the majority of rental owners are doing now).  

I suppose I was just interested in finding faster ways to sort through data and pre-qualify leads other than my overseas team.

If sending mail qualified as harassment, lots of businesses would be in trouble.

Hello - I am getting conflicting information.I have 6 conventional loans on my rental properties and primary residence. 

So if a newbie says I'm qualified up to $200,000, the seller should know that!

Echoing what @Major Robertson and @David C. have stated, you get what you pay for and there are a lot of "scams" (better yet, "under-qualified people, over-promising results").

Will it be worth it - i.e. will the return on your investment, after paying down the mortgage on your primary residence, be worth the risk if something goes wrong?

NOW, if we are to have the HOA responsible for the interior of each of the units as well, here are the eminent problems I foresee:    - owners will be even more careless and act irresponsibly for their units since they don't pay for the repairs of the interior of their units    - because many of the owners rent their units (technically they sublease), they will be even less incentivized to maintain their units    - the HOA pays for all maintenance and repairs of units and owners get the benefit of rent    - repairs/maintenance of units is not properly proportioned to their respective owners, meaning that there is no incentive to keep my property up because any repairs will come out of the pocket of all other owners    - this penalizes good owners and rewards slummy owners    - this will put the owner residents at a big disadvantage because the owners who rent their units will cause maintenance fees to increase for all owners, especially due to high turnover    --> in Summary, this is a straight example of socialist-style system (I know, my family immigrated to the US from the USSR) and it will just sink our whole Co-op.