I'm hoping to leverage the prior $900 to get a much better price on the labor portion, but I know we have one if the pricier servicers since they're one if the only ones that advertise regularly.

I would buy one and then in five years when I pay a large portion off I would flip it and buy 2 with the equity.  

Can I take a tax deduction for 5% of the total home purchase price or any portion of the price paid?

Which I'm not averse too.If I want to use the va home loan with the no money down portion I would have to stay in this area because of the residency requirement.

You don’t have to do the entire amount you could choose to defer a portion of it.

There are plenty of landlords who rent garage space to the highest bidder even if the person renting the garage space doesn't live in the property.If items are left behind you do need to keep them for 28 days but you can charge (i.e. retain portion of security deposit) a reasonable fee to store those items.There are lots of other things that are much bigger problems than some stuff getting left behind that I would worry about when considering investing in real estate. $100 for a month of storage unit or not using part of your garage for a month is a drop in the bucket.http://www.startribune.com/renting-and-the-law-tenants-left-their-junk-behind/294413421/

Realized that I have been letting self limiting thoughts control a portion of my life and am working on breaking the cycle!

See the process through first hand with a portion of the money rather than diving all in and maxing out your budget. 

Regardless if this is you or not, sounds like you are looking to Househack and have your tenant pay a portion of your mortgage.

Back in college, I took out a consumer loan and used a portion of it for opening a Roth IRA account.