You can often look online for the county/city zoning map, parcel info, and zoning laws.  

Despite having photos available, many prospective tenants still prefer to see the unit in person to get a better sense of where they'll be staying. 

Big banks and credit unions will look at a full DTI(personal income) while others will just look at the cashflow of the property.

Personally, I've been in the mobile home investing niche since 2007.

So that helped.I personally wanted to be more conservative as I pretty much reach “the number” that I needed (note that what “I needed” is different from what “I wanted” or what I was expecting by default.)

We have an LLC that holds real estate but have run into issues refinancing through the LLC when family is renting or ultimately living in the property so I’m also not sure if this should go through the LLC or be a personal purchase?

You may not get the first property you offer on because if it looks good to you, you will probably have competition so start offering on properties that fit into your personal investment philosophy and meet your minimum financial requirements. 

And also you sit down with your lender in person etc..

Hey Bigger Pockets community, I'm just starting out in Step 1 (get educated) on what I want to become a successful career in real estate investment.I also currently run an e-commerce business that is currently completely online, but would benefit from having a brick & mortar storefront, and I had an idea that maybe using the investment capital I'm looking to allocate into real estate into a commercial property my business can operate out of until I decide to sell the property in or rent it out to another business.I am obviously very naive when it comes to the complexity of any good real estate deal (especially commercial VS residential), but I'm hoping to spend as much time learning from everyone here who is on their journey as well.My main concern with the idea of buying commercial to operate my business out of it that I might struggle to rent it out afterwards and that there may likely be depreciation in the commercial real estate market over the next 5 years.I understand there is a lot of nuance depending on the local market but I'm guessing commercial is even less of a "safe" bet than finding a solid residential deal to leverage in some way.

I speak with the tenants personally and they are usually happy to tell me all the issues.