You should also ask the lender if they will permit you to owner occupy the property, since many commercial loans are not designed to be "consumer loans."

That being said, I think it is up to the listener/forum user to be able to critically think about the content they are consuming.

I, too, would like to hear from people who've gone through SFR to multi-unit rezoning

Millions upon millions of jobs lost "forever" ("exported" to the "third world"), more millions lost half or more of their retirement accounts, creditors slashed and burned consumer credit to the point where, by the banksters' own numbers, some 74% of Americans wound up with "bad" credit (it was only 47% before they did that), ...Now, add in the knee-jerk responses in the lending industry and you've got a situation where only the elite of formerly middle-class wage earners can even hope to qualify for new home loans.In fact, the given the current housing shortage (yet more fallout from the crash), it is ONLY the dearth of lending which is keeping home prices from launching into interstellar space by suppressing demand.

Thanks to all who've responded - these are all good thoughts and great advice.The only timeline for completion is that the house is just sitting there and I'm paying taxes on it and will be paying to keep it heated this winter. 

Your vacancy expense could be quite significant and consume all of your profit and even get into your principal.

And it seems baffling there are no construction or architecture firms dedicated to the concept.There is no convention in shipping container construction, therefore every step of the process is clunky, i.e. time-consuming, i.e. expensive.This is why, I believe, it hasn't (really) worked, which is definitely not to say that it won't work.

We have used various methods to save up for down-payment funds: we set aside pay raises instead of consuming them, re-enlistment bonus sums, tax-free income from deployments, an inheritance check, the tax-free savings account while deployed...And so forth.  

This issue is still being resolved I believe.A L/O that is with an occupant and where rental credits are applied is a financing agreement, you need to follow Dodd-Frank and Predatory Lender Laws with consumers (your tenants). 

Let's say you can consume 2 hours a day of podcasts.