Being realistic and reading into your post, I don't see SIL and her new man walking away from their sweet set up.  

You could rent a pent house sweet for 10k a month and it doesn't count against your DTI.

I went to view the home today and I think its got good potential to be a sweet deal.

I'm very happy with this.For metro Atlanta suburbs, this rent level seems a sweet spot.  

But good Multi REO's seem to have slowed to a crawl for various reasons, and many of those same investors have turned towards purchasing the distressed SFH plan with flipping.. making them hard to find, and when you do find them, there's a little bit of competition so the deal may not be as sweet.

Step 1: Buy just 4x $20k properties (carefully sourced in hard-to-find sweet spots of say, the Mid-West) and rehab them with your remaining cash, and of course, rent them out.

Ask sweetly for a hand with the trash.

Happens to be, a really sweet lady I work with happened to sign up for one of the programs that were very expensive.

I know people who have used them for deals with no or very little money out of pocket, however the deal has to be sweet enough.

With your short income history (assuming no other history) your first duplex purchase is sweet way to start off 2016.