All in all I think your situation can be summed up in the sense that it doesn't make sense to invest in this area (austin) without an almost speculative appreciation play.

If I was a full time investor (time wise) I think there's a fairly huge play in Milwaukee for the Cashflow play, minimal appreciationsPing me if you have questions about the neighborhoods here in the cities.

The local listing agent and property preservation company will have to agree that the new damage is actually new, so it's not easy to get away with bogus damage.There are some games you can play with the contract to get more than their 48 hours, but not a ton more time - usually another 2 days max from my experience.  

Granted, there isn't one of these guys on every corner, but I'll remind everyone that Shaquille O'Neal played at 325 lbs.  

One way to offset a lack of experience is to mandate that you use a professional property management company, which is in reality a good idea anyway until you have a measure of experience under your belt.The larger the property the more the lender will want to see that you have some prior multifamily experience, even with a professional management company in play.

You would still owe the same amount either way, but BOOM now you have NINE financed properties and can still get #10 Fannie/Freddie and avoid the 7%.There are also games you can play with putting the property and debt in your spouse's name alone (we're a community property state in CA so it makes little difference so long as you're married), with shoving the smallest debt amount into commercial, and a few others, but rolling your lowest mortgage balance into the property that you have the most equity in is the most commonly successful technique.TLDR: You can shove as much debt into as few properties as possible to avoid the 10 financed properties cap.

I recommend using the military 10% savings, any bonus or tax free, hostile fire,etc. as seed money to start your investing. 

You need to find out if you are even on the same playing field.

You can play the card of needing to have verifiable documents before listing the property.

I also have a valuable property that will go commercial out of that deal but its a 10 yr play.