I'm neither a lawyer nor an accountant, but I recommend Googling "closely held corporation" and then asking your tax accountant how, if any, the proposed idea might impact your overall tax situation (https://www.irs.gov/faqs/small-business-self-employed-other-business/entities/entities-5: A closely held corporation is subject to additional limitations in the tax treatment of items such as passive activity losses, at-risk rules, and compensation paid to corporate officers.).I've read that when two closely held corporations owned by the same small group of shareholders do business with each other, the IRS sees a red flag because some people try using this approach to evade taxes.From my readings of personal finance articles, this additional scrutiny is based on whether there is an "arms length" between the two parties in a transaction. 

Do you have any experience with finance or with buying & selling real estate or with carpentry or with electrical & plumbing or with design, etc?

Very interesting approach!

Is there a benefit to that approach vs just getting a typical home loan on the second property?

At first, a real estate offer that I created for my company was signed, and then we took it over to the local title company for direction as to how the Residential Contract of Sale should be filled out.Matthew, this being my first contract signed besides my personal residence, I felt that being inexperienced and trying to mull over the lengthy Contract of Sale with a motivated seller was not the best approach.

My personal view, 12% return is an minimum, it's very achievable with right business model and well-designed control and risk mitigation.   

My day job is WordPress Website Design (https://simplexstudios.com/) so I am slightly basis but I still, think its the best platform for most businesses as it currently powers 30% of the top sites.LearnDash - Learning Management System for WordPress: Great for courses, education, and more https://www.learndash.com/BBPress - Forums for WordPress: https://bbpress.org/BuddyPress - Add social features to your WordPress site, ie friends, likes, favorites, messaging etc: https://buddypress.org/Hopefully this points you in the right direct and let me know if you have additional questions

That will give you a good base understanding of most finance you need to know.For a deeper  understanding, the textbook: Real Estate Principles, a value approach by David Ling.

But with the close date approaching it does not seem like they will.

A properly designed permanent life insurance policy is the underlying asset.