I closed on our best deal to date a little less than a year ago and it was brought to me off market by one of my agents, and one of my loan officers was able to get me 75% LTV on appraisal instead of the normal "lower of appraisal of purchase price".

The county has different rental districts or areas of the county (from my understanding) that have a set lower assessed value. 

First, you can hire someone who has vastly more experience than you have, and at a level you can never expect to accumulate.

FHA will allow you to put down less than 10%, 3.5% in fact, but if you'd like a bit lower monthly FHA MI and removal of lifetime FHA MI you can put down that 10% if you want (only slight benefits).The SS rule will require you to have around 5850 gross rents or higher to qualify this "rule."

Use seller financing to hold the note to increase your profits, not sell the note to lower your profits.IRR would be the best way to calculate your ROI.

Whether your tolerance for risk allows you to scale to larger purchases, or you'd rather mitigate some of that risk and buy smaller properties is totally up to you, your goals and your comfort level.

Given this is your first deal you may have to put some money into the mix and your lender may go with a lower LTV. 

Basically you are paying more upfront in exchange for a lower long term interest rate.

This incentivizes some level of basic decency.

Wholesaling seems easier in lower priced markets from what I have seen .On the plus side if you actually have a deal it’ll be easier to assign it since there is a lot of investor activity now and it seems everyone wants to be in real estate .