If these were easy, everyone would be snatching these up, just think about it :)  Finally, just knowing and being apart of hundreds of 203k transactions for our private client construction business, this is not a forgiving loan and encountering large challenges with the purchase, may influence your opinion of the simplicity of the 203k, if you intend on using a 203k, perhaps seek something that requires more work and remove yourself from this short sale.

Most call this your sphere of influence.

There are some other influences.

Not a lawyer or anything, so I'm sure someone else can explain more on differences if you have a chance of life event or something, but this is is straight from the 92900B that you will sign in an FHA purchase loan:"Do not falsely certify that a property will be used for your primary residence when you are actually going to use it as a rental property""Penalties for Loan Fraud: Federal laws provide severe penalties for fraud, misrepresentation, or conspiracy to influence wrongly the issuance of mortgage insurance by HUD.

If the deal is for $140k all cash (and you get $40k right back), you're probably OK. but any half-wit loan officer the tenant uses will see right through what you did, which is to artificially bump up the market history of the property to influence the appraisal and mortgage size the tenant is applying for.

Peter Linneman has been a critical influence in driving the professionalization of real estate capital markets and the commercial real estate industry.

I was curious, however, as to the factors that influenced your decision to invest out of the local area, especially doing flips which seems really tricky from a distance. 

If you get to the point of owning hundreds of units, is it legal, that any rent raises are also influenced by cost of owning the unit.I have been renting for 17 years myself, and have never had a private landlord raise my rent.  

I think that may influence my response.

As others have stated above, there is no difference for federal income tax purposes.That being said, your business structure should not be influenced solely by tax implications.