He understands what investors are looking for, he's very timely in his communication, he's patient enough to answer all my questions and there's no hard sell.  

If anyone has any insight to any or all of my questions it would be greatly appreciated. 

Most importantly set clear goals and communicate clear goals to people you meet.

Communications, knowing what to ask, and how to ask it, then forming a gut feeling or instinct about what they told you. 

Big picture:It's your lender's job to advise you of your options and what makes sense, to communicate with you about the largest financial event of your life to date (& to respect that fact), and I could go on and on.

And of course you can negotiate to have some or all of the closing costs paid by the seller.

You don't want to be dealing with two different outfits and trying to get them to communicate.  

But I learned that having active, constant communication with the other side of the deal is so important, especially for the purchase.

I don't want to micromanage our PM but on the other hand I don't believe I get enough communication coming from them.  

Now, if you'd like to call this a "strategy" buy a discounted note that is performing, underwrite it and see if it can be refinanced, you can accomplish much of this during due diligence before you buy it.Then give the borrower a nice opportunity to refinance it, you can even pay some or all costs and get them a lower rate.