I'll investigate if this may be working for other RI's in my area.  

This is incorporated into your offer right away, so do your homework and make sure that you get a good contractor since you don't know what you are doing (over time this will change, as you do more and more houses.)Finally, do a title scan when you sign the contract, a preliminary title search takes like 1 day.

If we happen to buy in a market served by Roofstock, we may investigate as an option, but it's not a hard criteria.

My preliminary numbers have DSCR at 1.23%Question: How best to fund downpayment?

I'd investigate some other options where people have paid, which increases their buy in. 

To find out if a place has these laws, talk to local property managers.The metro areas that remain are the ones to investigate further. 

I recently started investigating Micro Flipping and would like to hear from anyone who has heard good or bad information about it. 

@Trevor Aydelott- glad to hear you're investigating Des Moines.

He is under investigation by the state for a deal that went really far south.I would talk to @Drew Fein

Ask the neighbors, look up obituary for next of kin, hire Skip tracer or Private Investigator to find them.