They might be flexible with down payment source as long as you can prove that you and your partners have the liquidity to close.

In my state source of income is a protected class, so I can’t deny on this fact alone.

If you are waiving, you need to determine the source of the water moisture causing the mold and the extent of the mold. sometimes, mold can grow in non-visible areas and can be worse than visual assessment. 

It's a big topic and that is a great source to start with.

At this point, I don't know if I should continue looking or go for a conventional loan and buy a cheap SFH live there for a year, move out and rent it, but that would mean that I have to pay the mortgage for a whole year and that would prevent me from saving as much as possible for the next investment.Basically, my plan is to create a new source of additional income and I believe real estate is a good way to achieve that.

One source of cities to avoid is Neighborhood Scout's 100 most dangerous cities.

If you want to look at an ARV from a future potential investment value from you renting it out, then you would need to find rental comps as well as investment sales comps to go with that rent to project a value off of NOI.It's going to be hard to pull comps without some sort of data source like Costar or Crexi or Real Capital Analytics.

All of this info can be sourced from online platforms and articles, real estate investment meet-ups, and general networking with folks in the industry. 

Longer term goal is to figure out how to make real estate investing my primary post military income source so that I can focus plenty of time on foster care and a non-profit we are involved with. 

There are lots of military towns where the base is the main source of employment (Lawton, Oklahoma for example).