We had a contract with a buyer that fell through after they did a further inspection and lowered their initial offer by $11.5k.

I'd rather get some initial investor experience, and a few cash-flowing properties, by simply operating rentals without having to worry about successfully estimating and completing a rehab. 

That $165k pays off the $150k hard money, covers closing costs, and if the numbers work, you may even pull some of your initial cash back out.

It can be just as much work as the initial lease signingIn closing these fees will never make your property manager rich.

That kind of threw me off, initially. 

Your initial post was about using generic letters and fear of detection.

Quote from @Michael Turner: here is their website - https://www.lurin.com/thanks in advance -  I did a quick check about the company and it passed the initial sniff test.

The initial online material is $97 and the 3-day certification is $1,495 (after $1,000 discount), all which will be reimbursed with first few deals. 

Instead I will be either driving multiple hours or flying.From my unexperienced perspective I was assuming that I should expect at least 3 trips in the first few months:* 1 Visit to get a feel for the area and look at some initial listings* 1 Visit for closing and initial assessment* 1 Visit for final prep and meet the 'team' (handyman / cleaners)Curious if others experience differs significantly from this.Thanks!

We have expressed our interests in buying the home to keep it in the family, so the parents and siblings agreed to a selling price of 550K. 550K minus our share of 160K (gift of equity) as our down payment  would bring our required loan amount of 390K to pay off the parents and two siblings’ shares.Our initial thought is that this is a great deal, but with little experience we are not sure it’s the best strategy to invest our money.