I've also heard from other people that Umpqua has excellent customer service. 

Some times a buy and hold investor can deal with the poor numbers when buying off the metro MLS,,, as long as 6-9% cap rate is ok for you and not knowing the location, an unknown cost of managing tenants.My best tip for you as a remote buyer is;  only buy where the house is cute, lower rehab cost of $15k or less in an ok neighborhood (eyeball and driving around)  and the high school great schools rating is 5 or better.  

My husbands uncle ( 70 years old) has a home he owes about $50,000 on.. current mortgage is $650.. he also has some credit card debt to the tune of $10,000.. with his social security he barely gets by and counts every penny.Here where the real estate investment part comes in...bare with meThe home is in dire need of rehabbing.. but he has no money to do the repairs.. in the current state the house might fetch $110,000.. comps in the area for moderate upgrades sell for $185,000-$210,00..He considered selling cheap to get out and buying a condo.. but he would still be cash poor.. he figures what he could sell the house for would pay off the credit card debt, and give him some money down on a condo..

Offer value to the customer to get the sale, then up sell. 

Very impressive customer service and their processing fees are low (for example $0.17 for eChecks).

We're going to start qualifying you as a customer within like 2 minutes of the conversation starting, on auto-pilot without even thinking about it.Every MLO has some time threshold, after which we will not spend additional time with a homebuyer without them submitting a credit package and providing authorization to run their credit.

But as investors start to get up there, they might look to commercial/blanket financing as the portfolio is large enough to grab the attention and warrants a more customized solution...

The house inspection was completed and I feel like I need to get a lower price due to some repairs I was under the impression were going to be completed are still incomplete or completed poorly.

I have not read Rich Dad, Poor Dad but I'm sure others here on BP can give you an earful on that book.  

Working through the other possible issues on qualifying FHA on a home less than 100 miles from our conventional.Maybe it was poor research on my part, but I hadn't thought the down payment would jump to 15% already.