If you have a closet that's all you need and you should definitely close the wall off so it could actually be used as a bedroom.  10'x10' is very common bedroom size in Chicago, although its not ideal it can easily fit a full soze bed with extra room.  

Ideally you want portfolio lending, even though it may not help you on this purchase, the relationship you build will help with future deals.

I'm not a single mother though, I will have help from the father (that info plays into my money expenditures).

I learned years ago that I cannot (or should say will not) play in this scenario.

There's been many times when I've had to step outside to take calls so clients can't hear the kids playing ( or being noisy) in the background.

Ideally once we have our first or second purchase under our belts, we would then start looking into duplexes or fourplexes.

For clarity, I still have a box of baseball/football cards as I idealized Bo growing up. 

If you want to be analyzing that many deals (even when narrowed down to 10 MSAs you'll be looking at a lot of deals), I would stress that broker relationships will play a major role in your success level, in terms of finding good deals.

I have played in this space as both buyer and seller.

That's where a security deposit would come into play.