If you're purchasing a single family home you can use traditional financing like you probably did on your house or you can do a commercial loan.

Provided you are sticking to the letter and spirity of your rental agreement, you have to set boundaries People that get indignant over you setting boundaries are not worth worried about. 

How can we know which boomer is going to list their home?

I'm not sure what the markets are like in Edinburgh or London, but I would look into house hacking in one of those cities once you know which one you'll be in.You definitely can invest in rentals in the US remotely, there are plenty of investors that do.

Are you cash flowing the property?

It sounds like you do if you want to self manage.

Thank you! 

With enough knowledge you can make a educated decision on which approach you take.My experience:I personally don't sign up for any program who take you aside during events and try to sell packages that is just blatant sales strategy.Once you sign up there is every attempt to make you sign for their programs for bookkeeping, registered agent, LLC or corp setup fee which have ridiculous even with platinum membership.Basic standard structure they suggest to take advantage of multiple deductions can be easily achieved by proper education or work with a good firm like https://wcginc.com  who is local to you.A umbrella C-crop to manage all other LLC properties and take advantage of many tax deductions that are not available with a llc, its also used to take losses up to 100K as startup expenses and dissolve the entity after few years.Few LLC entities for investing in Real Estate, etc preferably in Wyoming or Nevada ( you can find many companies online who can do this for $150 compared to anderson $1500-$3000) , they will claim they have a secret Operating agreement which is bogus.They certainly try to take advantage of tax loopholes and claim to be smart people, my view they are just taking advantage of numbers as per their own statements.

They probably want to be certain YOU are legit.Most of the scams I've seen are by non-owners. 

I remember though you and I talking with Chris.. he invited me to visit his office in memphis which I did later in the year..