If you can't keep control of your personal finances, you are highly unlikely to succeed in real estate investing.

Ultimately, the best market for investing under $250k will depend on factors like your risk tolerance, investment goals, and personal preferences.

My investing experience has been in stocks, mutual funds.

Is there a specific name for this person or could it be anyone in the bank? 

If you get a bad tenant, the rest of your tenants have to live with this person until you can successfully evict them.

Quote from @Russell Brazil: In the future, do a court records search at https://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/If you had done that, you would have seen they have 8 failure to pay rent cases against them.I am curious Who did the initial check on this person?

You have to get the person face to face.Creative deals are negotiated. 

You can also bring on another investor to bring the money for the down payment and fund the remainder with debt.

It all depends, this is why I always review potential client's books what is the best course of action.I personally do not like QBO for real estate (I make it clear in all my posts lol) I just renewed my certification just because most people can't afford the PM software with accounting such as AppFolio and Yardi.

@Matthew RolfI’m not doing a crash pad I’m house hacking a 5 bedroom house which I will live in here in a few weeks and rent the bedrooms on 1 year leases to pilots and flight attendants I’m personally friends with.