Definitely open to both options

Location (rapidly changing/close to amenities)This will hopefully make it easier to rent and give you options to rent out short term if desired.

Who knows.Another option would be to buy a small parcel and slowly build a house with/for him and pull owner permits.

Being leveraged for a bit isn't the end of the world - there are usually options available if push comes to shove - 401k loan, personal loan, sell stocks, credit card (then balance transfer continuously until you can pay the balance off) and lastly sell.

You will then have a few options with that rent money....you can put it into principal or you can start saving it to purchase yet another property.

He will try to justify that joining his program will be your best option, unless you have an unlimited amount of money and time to spend doing the research and learning real estate investing on your own, but the reality is that it does not take much time nor money to learn what he teaches, and even more; it will basically take a dozen of some of the best real estate investing books on Amazon and the time to go through them, subscribing to good sites as this one,  and joining a couple of good REIAs in your area, without having to pay for such expensive and useless mentoring.

It's a budget friendly option to some of the other services, and they have engineers on staff + audit defense, but the more expensive cost seg companies ($1500-2500) will actually do walkthroughs of your property via Facetime to more granularly estimate components of your structure. 

I did explain to them their options they had (such as sell it on the market, keep it and file BK, get a loan mod, and credit counselors out there who could potentially assist).

Since many experts and agencies collaborate closely, they could be able to recommend investors to you.Use internet directories or platforms that are dedicated to facilitating the connection of real estate experts and investors.

Since the space is usually open where the pews were, it gives you a lot of options for games or unique things for the space.