When we met and started talking price, he was asking above my strike price (if I was purchasing with a traditional mortgage), so I told him I could only offer what he was asking IF he was willing to hold the note with a payoff in a couple of years.

I would want to see market data that says most renters would prefer open shelves vs. traditional cabinets.

My day job is in a field where traditional big data solutions (Hadoop on computer clusters) isn't even efficient enough, which has put the focus on resilient data structures (RDD's) and Apache Spark as a foundation for alternative solutions.

I don't do many traditional quick flips anyore because of that.

I recently was a little discouraged by a lack of good deals that I've been looking for, and I was even beginning to wonder why I'm doing this. 

I know they're different than traditional loan packages and I'm not nearly as familiar with the process.

But to put down 25%(almost 30k) plus closing costs is way too much cash to put out.I tell people all the time, "Act like you are broke, but want to get into real estate investing even if you have money"  You have to try to find ways to get into the deal without going the traditional route and spending 35k. 

This is not to discourage you but encourage you, if this is the path you want to take it will take work but it will be worth it.

It is not impossible to find properties that cash flow using traditional financing but it will be tougher. 

These are a lot less accurate than the wall mounted thermostats and also discourage people from adjusting/ turning them down since one has to get right down to floor level to adjust.