Unless of course, you are referring to commercial rents. 

I'm gonna play a small hand and see if I can get a counter offer accepted for the 2 empty lots next to my personal home.

The IRA funds would not be able to be combined with other personal funds as in your note above. 

I got the current owners (person who is selling me the property) blessing to post the house for rent right now with a move in date of August 1st if I wanted to. 

Understand that the below market rates you are referring to by the big builders comes out of their profit pool to buy down the rate.

Would I be able to deduct depreciation against my personal w2 income without having rental income for the year? 

Rent the other side of the duplex to a person you then employ as a full-time (or part-time) nanny.

They are saying if a person lived on the property for more than 14 days contiguously then their damages can't be considered vandalism.

I have about $300 on my credit cards (just finally paid them off for the most part, and have about $20,000 limit).My cash on hand is relatively light, but what my plan was was to find some single family homes in the north Detroit area (currently anywhere from $40-$60k and put about $15-20k tops into any repairs or fixes (not looking for total rehabs, mostly something I can do some small repairs here and there and paint, personally I am knowledgeable about renovating up until complex electric and plumbing).

Most of the sites I've found seem to be more targeted towards investors, and not the person bringing the deal opportunity.