Where another issue arrises is I recently quit my job after becoming pregnant as they would not cover my maternity while overseas, my husband is employed however he works for a UK company and is British so would be unlikely to help us with the situation in the US.

Make sure it would be someone you could learn from in the deal and then I would encourage you to only use a portion (probably only 50k to 100k) of your available capital in the deal.  

Never in the history of the Federal Reserve have prices gone down for any notable period of time.

I weigh more on making 3x rent and having great rental history of on time payments with no evictions, no lease violations or violent criminal history.

Both me and my wife have full time jobs. 3) That $5875 is the 25% of contribution that S-corp can make towards employee retirement. 4) Thank you so much for improving my understanding on how 401K limits are calculated.

Don’t let that discourage you, but just know that stepping outside your comfort zone will be part of the journey from time to time.

If there's enough duplexes that it's likely you find one you like in a reasonable amount of time (less than a year), then start looking at them in your preferred area.

Do you have free time to look into buying properties/can you make it a priority?

How about the jobs lost of persons who worked at those places. 

And service sector jobs and wages follow where those top-line incomes go.