I toured the property when they were home and they asked me how the living situation was gonna work, which I explained that my loan said that I had to live on the property for a year, and the tenant next door was on a year lease & he was month to month... so he was going to have to leave.

I assumed you'd use HELOC for down payment + another loan for the rest. that is 100% financed. 

They are either a combination of a Maintenance/Tenant Management business or Accounting/Real Estate sales/Tenant management service. 

These are the key to getting a loan.  

My belief is that you will be challenged to realize a 10% savings loan n your first effort and there is some chance it will cost more than if you used a GC.  

I'm learning more about loans and such as I used the VA.

If my spouse wasn’t opposed to moving I would try to buy a new house hack every 12-15 months and use low down payment owner occupied loans for as long as it made sense.

Credit Unions are pretty great, as in my experience, commercial loan renewals tend to be automatic.

Is it hard money loans, angel investors, etc?

So I did a 3-2-1 buydown and secured a 2.875% interest loan for the first year of the loan, and it will gradually go up a percent each year until it hits my rate of 5.875%!