Connect them with your Mortgage Broker so that they can assess how likely they are to be approved for the home in the allocated amount of time, upfront.

As an expat with a wife that was here on a government contract we were allocated a housing allowance, such is the standard here and for good reason as you will understand more later.

I recently moved to the Chicagoland area and would like to invest my on-hand cash (all cash deals) in tangible real estate, already have a good allocation to stocks and bonds.

Yes, no one asked about the accounting that Steven brings up, can be a head scratcher at first.Take the loan and divide the balance allocating it on it's loan to value of each value to all properties and allocate the interest and principal paid to each property.

Often the allocation of a portfolio is 70/30.

I recently graduated college and now I'm an Asset Manager for Real Estate Investors, so I was wondering what would be the best way to use the money allocated from the sale of the land.

They may cash flow for a few years but over time a few hundred dollars allocated to capex is not enough to maintain these properties and they implode.

So try not to allocate any portion of your sale to that. 

I would probably allocate X amount to RE and the rest in a solid mix of paper assets. 

I don't think trading financial derivatives is an efficient allocation of investor resources UNLESS that investor is confident in the impending crash, has sold all his/her holdings and is so certain of the timing/severity that they can allocate the time to bet a substantial portion of his/her available capital on it.