Buying as a primary residence gives you a lower interest rate, lower insurance and starts building up credit and home equity that you can borrow on later. 

The option to quit a job with a middling base salary, for example, and take a more commission based sales job with a lower base salary might become an opportunity instead of a risk.

Account ClosedWhen applying for a loan, lenders will use the lower score between the two.If your brother's credit and income is truly bad, it's not worth taking the risk.There are other considerations.

However the monthly payments are still considerably lower than what I can afford, and I am also largely financially independent at this point in life.I scrimped and saved til about age 37....now I spend pretty freely as even doing so I have much more coming in than going out.

Does anyone here have any experience with proerties in rough neighborhoods? They obviously have the cheapest housing, but obviously less desirable tenants for the most part. Wondering if the damage and late/no pay is ...

You will likely get a lot of high bids, but eventually you should come across someone that has a bid significantly lower than the average retail contractor and can show you examples of their work. 

Long term commercial debt lenders make adjustments but does not generally follow that.For high quality assets i am currently seeing about 4.8 percent for 10 year debt. 5 year fixed I am seeing about 4.5%.If a life insurance company they can go lower on rates but want minimum 35% down and more picky on the properties to lend on.Seller financing can be great BUT just remember to not way overpay for an asset just to get that.

I am considering going the 5/1 ARM route and put the savings from taxes and the lower payment towards the principle of the home.

Obviously with an ultimate goal and hope that potential buyer DOESN'T SEE the actual original price - the price lower than my price.

Looking at the pics on Zillow I see the following:Paint and carpet look new, Carpet looks like lower grade.