For us an average home is 350k 2-3 years ago monthly payment at 4% with 10% down was $1900  and now its $2500 for the same house.FL is filled with people on fixed and low income.

@Peter Mckernan Copy.... it's a "% based payment" off scope of work. 

My plan is to use a low down payment conventional loan, and with the factors you mentioned, it’ll likely be tough to find a property that breaks even.

Instead of a traditional down payment, I would give them some money (maybe just to bring the loan back to even).The upside if taken over the loan at the current balance, with some rehab and hopefully getting the front lot back would be a nice ROI. 

Simply gifting him half the property now wouldn’t immediately allow him to claim the exclusion without fulfilling this residency requirement, I don't believe.One thought would be to use a HELOC to pull just enough equity out of the current home and use it to buy a smaller home, or at least the down payment.

Rearrange photos, change payment from one to two payments, etc. 

For the property I purchase, I’d like to keep my monthly mortgage payments at $2,000 or less.I prefer a turn-key property since this is my first rental, and I want to start generating monthly cash flow immediately without the delay of repairs or managing two mortgages.

QB really is not made well for landlords and landlords leave QB every day for better software, payment processing is really expensive, and with QB there's no tenant portal for your tenants to schedule payments or push maintenance requests. 

Here in the Myrtle Beach area there are plenty of deals that will cash flow with a 25% down payment.

A bit about my situation and motivation for getting into real estate investing...I have a full-time, high paying W2 job as a specialist physician that I generally enjoy but would like to  be able to supplement my income over the next 8-10 years if/when payments decline in medicine.