A pension sounds good, but I don't want to be limited in retirement. 

I feel the loss of earnest money is a cost that will save me many thousands of dollars in vacancies/repairs etc of a bad investment.My goals:I would like to replace my current income stream in the next 2-3 years.

@Alexander Felice I thought delayed financing meant you where limited to get back only the purchase price + closing costs?

I've hit the 10 mortgage limit and am now stuck at how to keep growing.

For mom & pop tenants, the landlords will not typically waive these pass-through expenses all together, however, you may be able to limit the impact of the increases.

Once I get that info, I can make an offer based on what it would cost to mitigate certain issues with the lagoon.From what I can tell from my limited research, some folks swear by lagoons and others swear when they see them.

A little bit of background about ourselves: we both work regular jobs and have a very regular middle class incomes hence we thought partnering up is a good idea to bring in the initial investment and also w.r.t dividing up the profits and sharing the losses if any that we encounter.

I believe I have the ability to set a dollar limit they can charge before prompting a store associate to call me for approval.

It is a passive tax loss for people in high tax bracket who bet property values will go up.      

(I imagine this would depend on a number of factors, but I’m at a loss on what to compare a USDA-guaranteed offer against.)