My experience with commercial loans is the bank spends most of the time analyzing the deal, most commonly they use Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) or Debt Yield to analyze these situations.

Add to that, the strong performance of suburban office, as companies are generally departing the city centers, retail confidence rising and people wanting to spend, and all of this will start moving money back out of multifamily and into office and retail again.  

Spend time figuring out exactly who you want to surround yourself with and then get to work at mastering the basics.  

Instead of spending all the time necessary to craft a custom application, I would use an existing process through a website like Zillow or many others or at least ask your real estate agent for a blank application.

I am not sure if partnering with close friend, also with 50% stake in the game when I may have to spend more time on this whole process sounds fair or not.

I trust my management company but I always approve anything over $100 before they spend my money on it.  

Cash back gives you flexibility to spend it how you see fit, versus being locked into mileage and block out restrictions. 

Listing agents don't need advertising, buyer agents have no money to spend on leads.

Surely there is a clause in it regarding the amount of money they are permitted to spend without owner approval. 

Median Price: $525,000 +7.14% Yoy - 7ish % isn't unusual, I have multiple ~7% moves since 2016.Sales: 5,344, -10.06% - normal number for September, 2020 was unusually high due to delayed purchases from Covid thus the yoy lossYTD sales: 41,238, +8.36% - highest Sept read I have, houses are selling.Inventory: 5,875, +6.16% - still too low compared to pre-Covid, see stacked chart.New Listings: 6,366, -10.61% - still too low compared to pre-Covid, see stacked chart.YTD New listings: 51,949, -2.47% - prior to Covid we were running 60k+ houses.Months Supply: 1.2, -14.29% - persistently low indicating an unrelenting sellers market, see the Existing homes as a % of households chart, continues to shrink.Cumulative days on Market: 26, -44% - persistently low indicating an unrelenting sellers market