Would love to arrange a meet up with some like minded investors closer to my area.  

I'm at that stage where I would like to have narrowed down what cities in Florida I want to invest in and how to find multifamily in those places so that I can begin building a broker funnel and analyze deals they find.

In the early learning stages, and every chance i get, I'm reading one thing or anotherr.I've even set up a plan in my mind.Now to act on that plan.The reason I'm asking howis due to low money and bad credit .Please give me some advice .

I am in the beginning stage  of my real estate investing career, I am very much interested in wholesaling, fix and flips, buying-hold and rentals.After graduating from college with a Bachelors Degree  in Structural Engineering, certain things in my life happened and made me realized that this was not my calling and by listening to different podcasts on my commute to work, one of the podcast that changed my mindset was "The Flipping Empire Pod Cast" with Nasar Elarabi and Christopher Seder.

Most renters don't expect staged rentals unless at a complex with a model unit.

If the ONLY reason you made the first call was because you had an arrangement to give your leads to your "quite dishonest" investor, then like it or not, I believe you should give him that lead, and charge him that bird dog fee (I believe NC is fine with such arrangements - but please check).How do you think it will end if your dishonest investor discovers what you have done behind THEIR back?

This avoids let me think it over.Three negotiate and discover how motivated they are to fix the problem, I do this by asking how they feel about many different solutions, will sing it with another agent another company, how we feel about property managers, how they feel about for sale by owner, etc.Four if there's a lot of equity, talk about some cash now and some cash later, using notes, leases, etc.Lastly use a "what if" statement in step fiveA "what if" statement might sound something like this:"Mr. and Mrs. seller, we've been through a lot today, I do want to ask you one or two more questions, and basically it's the kind a solution I can provide for you, you may not like the solution and if you don't then I'll pack up and go, but I think after talking to you it's the best solution....what if I could arrange a payment coming to you over a period of time, I don't know 24 or 36 months, then whenever the existing balance is, say it's $110,000 (i'm inserting this number) and that's a good guess, but you will receive a payment over 24 to 36 payments to pay your principal interest taxes and insurance, and then whatever your balance on your mortgage would be paid off in full, at the end of the 24 to 36 months, and I don't even know if I could get that done for you, because  I need to talk it over with my business partner, he does all the contracts( this is called appeal to a higher authority)...if I can get this done for you, it would take about 45 days to do, so someone would move into this beautiful house, make a payment for 24 to 36 months and then pay off your mortgage in full, Is that something to even talk about or should we just scrap that idea?

Get a fee arrangement negotiated up front.  

Most don't understand how to fight/make arrangements with tenants/courts/fines/ etc, nor would they be willing to do so.

They bring deals that they say cash flow at 10% with financing pre arranged at 7-9%.