I am very interested in combining my skills of construction and reselling to start flipping houses and BRRRRing.

Usually they are combined with a hard money loan or something similar.

More like if you combined a drug dealer with a used car salesman, except that those two professions actually do own the things they are selling, I guess!   

I know I will probably get shouted down by a combination of "it's his money" and "it is not really high risk" but in the current market you are not buying BRRRRRs on the MLS. 

Sometimes a conventional loan is actually easier & cheaper than an FHA.But either way you can get rid of PMI by paying the loan down early, having the property value appreciate, or a combination of both.  

Private money combined with your HELOC or personal money is the best way to start IMO.  

It's most likely congestion combined with politics, mixed with a slight touch of weather.

I am a fan of house hacking, but if that is not an option for some reason, I am a fan of BRRRR (I am really a fan of combining the two). 

I can combine together but it gets tricky. 

It's possible to address the first one through combining several mortgages into a smaller number of blanket mortgages secured by one property, but that doesn't really help you with the second issue unless you also get a lower rate and payment amount.You mentioned that they look at your tax returns rather than the rent roll/leases for the income on your properties, so you may be experiencing one of the real estate investor's paradoxes: If you do a great job maximizing your expenses and minimizing your income for tax purposes, you'll also make it more difficult to qualify for a mortgage 😂There really isn't an easy solution for the second problem, at least if you want to continue getting more fixed rate residential mortgages and want to continue to minimize the taxes you pay each year.This is why many of us end up being driven into the arms of commercial lenders, whose loans do adjust every 5-7 years but who also underwrite much more on the specific collateral property and less on you as an individual per se, and who focus much less on your other properties (though they do look at them generally as part of your complete Personal Financial Statement).