For the purpose of this post, I'll refer to 'fix and flip lenders' as Hard Money and 'individual lenders' as Private Money.Through these conversations I get to have, it blows my mind how many people don't use Google!

Overall, I love the strategy and have advocated for it time and again, but as a first-time home buyer, it's essential to be realistic during the process.

Many people on bigger pockets are advocates of using "other people's money", which is basically debt (right?)

I'm a big advocate in investing where you understand.

Financing long term needs on short term financing can be a disaster......short term financing for short term needs, long term for long term needs.Sounds like your mortgage broker is doing a bit of a sales job to get a higher origination on the loan amount, they often misrepresent the real cost of that additional money (might be he doesn't really know and not trying to blow one past you).

Anybody's guess.The economy blows up on a regular basis, and it seems to be blow-up time right now.

And yet many of these folk’s returns will blow away those who only buy 1 or 2% rule properties, caveats notwithstanding.Now, don’t get me wrong, not everyone who buys a Property in a desirable market will not automatically make great returns.  

Sure no reason to go the STR route if you don't cashflow more with a short term rental.However, I have a manager for two of my STR's in Texas and the cashflow blows away any long term rental cashflow (10x).

Passively I invest in a couple of conservatively underwritten (less than 65% LTV, no judicial-only states, first position) debt funds, since debt has priority in the capital stack if things blow up, and has the protection of foreclosure. 

@Sean Laney - I am a big advocate for HELOCS, especially when most peoples first lien positions are in the 2's and 3's.