Personally I want to see a sponsor that has gone through at least one full real estate cycle with little to no money lost, uses conservative leverage and projections, put significant skin in the game and has competitive/reasonable fees and splits.The thing is that the majority of these really experienced sponsors have built up very enthusiastic investor bases over time, so they are generally not going to crowdfunding sites (where they would have to pay an extra fee) or spending time on forums.

FHA sounds real nice due to the low down payment which is what i'm after so i can use the extra money to "update" the home, but i'm worried that the homes i'm looking for wont pass inspections with FHA.

I would appreciate anyone you could get me in touch with.I don’t mind hustling extra hard.

If you get it, consider yourself fortunate for the extra profit.

Cons: Expensive to maintain - can push tenants away who don't have the extra money and you certainly don't want pool cleaning coming out of your monthly rent. 

If I have a PM to take over management work, the extra profit of multi-family over single family goes to PM's income.

As long as you have extra reserves given the volatile nature of the world right now, I would continue to invest.

As a result, for the new house I would buy, they want to charge an extra 25% of my current mortgage as a down payment on the new house, in addition to the 20% down....Do you know anything about this?

Your capital is more protected from the extra doors and your cash flow can grow exponentially.

I would not replace the carpeting, can it be glued down until they get the dog and all the extra people out?