@rick taxed at short term cap gains I intend on keeping till 1 year markYour other questions I’ve answered elsewhere in the thread

Another wildcard is that the tax office opened in The UAE a year ago.

Let's assume your expenses (mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance, vacancy, etc.) comes to a clean $600 and the property rents for $1,000.

There are less taxes in Alberta too.

Deduct NEW property taxes after you buyDeduct home insurance costsDeduct maintenance percentage, typically 10%Deduct vacancy+tenant nonperformance percentage(we recommend 5% for Class A, 10% Class B, 20% Class C, good luck with Class D)Deduct whatever dollar/percentage of cashflow you wantNow, what you have left over is the amount for debt service.Enter it into a mortgage calculator, with current interest rate for an investment property, to determine your maximum mortgage amount.Divide the mortgage amount by either 75% or 80%, depending on the required down payment percentage - this is your tentative price to offer.If the property needs repairs, you'll want to deduct 110%-120% of the estimated repairs from this amount.Be sure to also research the ARV and make sure it's 10-20% higher than your tentative purchase price.As long as the ARV checks out, this is the purchase price to offer.It is probably significantly below the asking price.

Assuming this is an 8 cap neighborhood you'd have a ~$420-450k value within a year (unless property taxes are crazy high) when leases would renew since it'd be valued as a commercial building with the office space.

I am looking to purchase real estate for both investment purpose as well as to offset as much tax liability as possible. 

There are two reasons this is a bad idea.Investing with an SDIRA (assuming it is not a Roth) will often result in paying significantly more taxes. 

If you own them free and clear you will likely only pay for title and transfer tax on the market value of the property if you want them to be under LLC. 

No problem.. what I did with my ridgeland and Madison rentals and I had bought 12 new builds for the Gozone tax bene's post Katrina..