I've also seen that there are some private and hard money that would do loans to foreigners but they seem much more expensive and they would probably kill the cash flow from the buildings i am looking into.The duplex I own I paid for with my personal line of credit but that limits my buying power by alot.The main reason why I invest in the states is simple, in my area in Canada, gross rent multiplier is about 16-20x, which is not ideal for cash flow.So my question to you is this: does anyone think that it's worth it to get loans with higher interest rates and just go with my initial strategy?

I anticipate using a property manager at least initially.

Include this in your expenses when you run the numbers whether you decide to use PM initially or not. 

My initial cash investment was about $27,500, and my cash out refinance was about $15,000 more than that.

Also going through FSBO, what's the best way of initiating the process?

If she wants the house and feels capable of purchasing it, let her go to the bank to get qualified and initiate the move.

I am using QBO and want to account for utilities that I initially pay for (since they are shared throughout the building), and then the tenants reimburse me for each month (each unit pays a % of the total). 

This is where you will spend the bulk of your time initially is educating yourself and looking at opportunities.

That is still a very good return for a less than $16K initial investment (down plus closing but you may have put the closing cost in the loan and had even a smaller initial investment which would increase the ROI).You appear to have done great even if compensating yourself for you handyman labors.Great job and good luck

I have also received a few private messages so I'll be reaching out to them for some initial discussions.Trying to weight a conventional loan agains having to register a LLC for a hard money loan.