., roof etc. for renovations-Local lenders (who maintain their own RE portfolio)- (i have heard the Schertz Bank and Trust is a portfolio lender...are there any others?)

Negotiating on a portfolio of condo units in Wichita, KS.  

I would like to start out with flipping a few single-family homes before building a portfolio of single family rentals.

With this portfolio, seems like either the market values are over-valued by the seller or the ratio is just a little weak. 

It seems that leveraging (using) the mortgage payments to build quick equity and then using that to fund new investments would be a much faster way to build a portfolio of properties rather than only saving from my W2 job each month. 

I hope to purchase my first flip here in the near future to start gaining some experience and building a portfolio.  

You buy it for 239k need 40k for work = 279k. there are many private /portfolio /hard money lenders that would lend you 224k so that you need 56k plus fees to complete the purchase and repairs.If you don't know any lenders that do this type of stuff send me a email.

Now that he is retired with his own portfolio of rentals he won't work on mine anymore.

I would ideally like to keep the place to build a rental portfolio.  

If you have  lot of money and are OK will a lower return then the diversity of the portfolio is good.