In my area we have a ordinance which dictates what can be written in leases and what can be charged. 

If you hold for more than 1 year as a rental, then you sold, you would pay short term capital gains taxes at 15%.So your intent and your actions dictate if you will pay ordinary income + self employed, or if you will pay long term, or short term capital gains.

Like every other city, there are market specifics to each that may dictate whether a property is a good deal or not, the potential for appreciation, and the quality of tenants you might get.Good luck!

this should be your starting point on this deal and will dictate anything downstream.... 

As a new investor, I want more control over my investment than what the market has dictated.

. - now I turn my focus to slightly higher end houses and traditional financing (cash-out refi I should really say)3) have access to 175k  to start making cash offers on larger homes looking for motivated sellers that want to move quick so I can get them under market value (shooting for 85% or 75% of market value if possible but may be hard... not sure)  - once a purchase is made I have two options (dictated by how good of a discount I got)1) If I find a house for 75% of market value then:   - use my line of credit to get the cash to purchase and then make interest only payments for 6 months waiting for the new home to "season". once it's seasoned, cash-out refi at 75% of market value pulling my initial vestment back out and paying off the line of credit.2) if I find a house for 85% of market value then: - commercial loan (5 year fixed rate, 20 year adjustable and slightly higher interest rates) on this new house as they will give me 85% market value with no seasoning, pay off my line of credit immediately then start making aggressive payments for the next 3 years on this new home with positive cash flow from all my other 3 rentals

Right, the community banks keep these loans in their own portfolio and so can be quite a bit more flexible with their own rules than the Fannie/Freddie guidelines dictate.   

She simply dictated the terms in which she was willing to sell to you - i.e. that she expected you to be the party closing on the property if you were the one making the offer to buy the property.

As long as you have other tenants in the mix, I would ignore those that want to have you follow their process and dictate to you who provides and runs what.  

I plan to acquire a mentor and complete my first deal by March 15, yea it's the Ides of March which only brought bad luck to that Roman dictator but I figure it's lucky for me.With March completing my first deal I plan to slowly wean myself from my regular day to day tasks and to be financially secure to be a full time entrepreneur in this business by December 31.Between March and December 2015 I will complete at least a deal a month wholesaling ( $5000 minimum profit per deal) while I fine tune and learn other aspects of REI.