I have read from countless investors who the majority have a handful or properties such as myself who keep their properties in a LLC for liability reasons and the tax benefit you mentioned. 

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If you are unfamiliar with this case, it is fascinating read.

Lenders only care that they get paid back.

The only difference is that I care about the finished product and will not argue that it's "good enough" without charging thousands extra to make it right. 

If you need the interest only payment period to get a property stabilized, that is pretty typical in bridge loans for larger multifamily properties, but that is going into the property with the expectation you are going to be doing some substantial work to increase the cash flows accordingly, versus buying a property that has been relatively well taken care of and good property management in place.

That said, we don't need to be next to family but being somewhat close by has advantages so those places are favored somewhat.The strategy is to buy, househack a value-add multifamily for 2 years then rinse and repeat until we can build up enough capital to either start developing, move to larger multifamily or the wife wants to start a senior care facility. 

oh I just read their purchase agreement with the seller, it seems they did get POA to do anything with the house.

I'm deeply interested in the field of RE and have mostly been reading up on my own, looking through BP resources and learning about the REI space in general.

In the middle of those two extremes might be a small business with 3 years left on their lease, but they've made improvements to the property that aren't cheap to remove, such as perhaps a dental office (dentists might be pissed that I put them in the mid-risk category, but all the dentists going out of business in 2020-2021 taught us that American consumers apparently regard dental care as an optional and "luxury" spending item).