So looking at my finances I had to make the choice and I decided that while fixable, I just did not have the money because I tend to share the thought on something you brought up that being, that,  "In my experience most properties with structural issues are not discounted adequately to cover the cost to correctly remedy the problem(s)." 

Try to decide on something that will set the tone for the whole house, like the counter top or the flooring and then you will have far fewer colours and patterns to choose from to stay within budget.

Therefore, I gave this a lot of thought from my experience of non paying tenants and ive decided to move here for couple years, make 500k and move back to CT. 

I have tried with two smaller lenders(National Bank of Arizona and OneAZ Credit Union) and they have both dragged it out for several months before deciding they wouldn't do the loan for what I perceived to be fairly silly reasons(Management didn't like that the tenant had only been in for 1 year, Management didn't like that the structure used to be a residence, management didn't like that 3 years ago I took a loss in a completely unrelated business etc.)I am hoping that someone out there has had some success purchasing or refinancing commercial property like this in AZ and can put me in touch with someone who actually completes deals like this.

First Decide your goals.

College housing has become incredibly expensive and you’ll save a lot of money if you can pull this off.If you do decide to buy in Minneapolis I would consider whether or not you plan on coming back here?

I went to a couple of local workshops and decided that buying and flipping was too big of a place for me to begin (maybe in the future, I'm not ruling anything out).

I slept on this and using some of the feedback provided decided that I would simply stand by my decision to charge.  

There are several tax experts who are active here on the forum who might be able to assist you.But first you need to decide which type of retirement account is the right fit for you: you can have a custodial self-directed IRA, or you can enhance it with the checkbook control by setting up Checkbook IRA (aka IRA owned LLC).

If you moved in with a washer/dryer, then he should maintain the washer/dryer.If you allow him to start charging for laundry then he could suddenly decide to charge for use of the oven or a parking space.