I'm only active in a few small pockets of Indy.

Both investments represent different levels of activity, if you were to own them.

It sounds from your description that it is.However, because you also do personal activities in the room (play games on your desktop), it doesn't sound like this would pass the "exclusive use" rule.Playing the games on your laptop in a different room would likely qualify the room as "exclusive use" as a home office.Also note that in the future if you take this deduction, there is a simplified method you can use to reduce the records you have to keep - just multiply the square footage of the office by $5 (if it is under 300 total square feet).

Being active-duty have a lot of challenges when investing, like most of us know, one of them being the trust. 

People that want to make the big move are actively looking for that information. 

Your best bet is to talk to a commercial loan specialist directly. 

Here is the quick and dirty; I am late cashing out an investor due to the fact that my account is currently frozen due to some red flags on how I was moving money in and out (newer account, a few failed closings, so monies came in and out of escrow, so the activity looks weird) The bank is doing some kind of anti money laundering investigation, which I am not worried about at all.

We are looking for active local groups in Tacoma/ Puyallup area to start meeting some people and learning about our local market.

@Travis Moore - seems like option #3 would be your best bet. 

It sounds like a hard money lender is your best bet.