Mostly good old small town banks stuffed full of farmer cash, I think.  No tricks, full disclosure to loan officer.  I think the carrot was that an 80/20 loan was a cheap rate and a 100% cash flow investor loan was 50-75% more interest (more risk but the multi-family housing industry had standards that accepted it, as opposed to single family or any other sector - not my circus, just what I recall hearing).

Pretty sure my buddy made out fine, he screened his tenants carefully and told me in that depths of COVID that half took their stimulus money and had paid their rent 1-6 months ahead, 45% were current and 5% were late but almost all were in touch with him and had a plan.  Only a couple appeared to have a plan to stiff him.  Guess which half didn’t get their rent raised for a couple of years?

He told me his other buddy was doing the same thing but put the first interested person into a unit and had a heck of a time collecting during the eviction moratorium.  I don’t think that guy is in a happy place today … unlike the first guy who could do math and run risk ratios guy #2 appeared to think he could outsmart the system indefinitely.