@Andrew MichaelActually, there are hard money lenders that offer permanent financing. 

Second, yes on the flip side, one could argue they should not have to pay for materials out of their own pocket especially when they are about to permanently attach those materials they paid for to your land or building.      

I have one older property (my original house) that has a rent/price ratio 1.12% and rent/ft2 ratio of $0.96/ft2 (this property does attract a lower quality of tenant, something we are moving away from with our new builds).I am able to build the properties such that my permanent financing @ 75% LTV allow me to leave no significant cash in the project, due to built in equity.  

I would have closed in a week if not for July 4th giving my attorney a 5 day weekend last week.If you could use a loan like this to acquire and rehab your place, and get yourself 10 or 20% equity, your take-out (permanent) financing would not have such high PMI costs (or none), and would also avoid some other FHA costs, so it might not cost you much more than the 203k in the end. 

Fiance has very little desire to share space with tenants, so it looks like we'll be doing SFHs as opposed to multi-families (though I still have hope I can convince her to try it for the first property, but let's assume it's not going to happen).Tentative Plan:-Buy a SFH for $150,000-$200,000 in Phoenix area with a VA loan ($0 down), live in it for 2 years while aggressively forcing appreciation as much as possible, have one or more kids-Buy second SFH for $200,000-$250,000 in Phoenix area (upgrade reason: more space for kids) with another VA loan ($0 down) using remaining entitlement, rent out first SFH, live in this one for 1-2 years while aggressively forcing as much appreciation as possible-Buy third SFH for $200,000-$250,000 with an FHA loan (3.5-5% down), rent out second SFH, live in this one for 1-2 years, not going to try to force appreciation too much right away but instead will spend more time and money building equity in the first two houses-Refinance both VA loans into conventional loans once I have 25%+ equity in both, use the "one time restoration of entitlement" to free up all my entitlement again, rent out third SFH, buy permanent primary residence for as much as I can afford at the time (but not more than the VA maximum) with a VA loan ($0 down) for my now large family to live in forever-Aggressively force appreciation and build equity in third SFH until I can refinance that one into a conventional loan as well to get rid of PMI, then continue on from thereSo, my main concern is affording the second SFH without the necessary two years of landlording experience.

They are in the process of getting permanent residency at the moment with their interviews coming up in the next few weeks.

What do rates look like for permanent financing? 

Dear colleagues,I live, work and pay taxes in the US, at the same time I am a citizen of another country, a so-called permanent alien.

Ask yourself if you would rent to them if the kids were permanent occupants.If mom dies, gets seriously sick or goes to jail you will have 5 permanent tenants till they give notice to move.When approving applicants you must consider all conceivable possibilities in determining if you wish to risk accepting anyone as a tenant.

I would certainly double-check this since FHA loans from years past had PMI end sooner (now it is permanent) so please check your mortgage statement or call your mortgage holder to learn how much your PMI is and when it will go away (if it ever will).