It seems to go straight to a commercial is not ideal for a new sales agent.

I work in finance and do my own taxes as its normally pretty straight forward.

So when trying to reshape a portfolio while minimizing tax you'd want to straight out sell the properties that have the least depreciation recapture and profit and the greatest amount of equity (lowest debt). 

I would qualify for traditional lending, however I've been told that I'd need to hold the property for a year and as I said before, I don't think that's right for me.A hard money loan for the purchase and renovation would be the most straight forward approach, but the higher carrying costs could easily break the deal if the project didn't stick to schedule (but that never happens right?)

Assuming I don’t get a straight answer about the reasoning for the owner wanting to sell.... on paper this looks like a great investment, so why would they sell???

The state has lost more people, than gained, for 7 years straight now.

You can depreciate the structure valued after renovation at $300,000-50K (50K being the presumed value of the land itself) over 27.5 years = 9,090/year using a straight line depreciation method

Shipped it straight from Amazon....

In conclusion, if you straight up over paid for both properties and there’s no way to remedy this.

And my dad lives in Texas, and insists that I DO NOT “move twice” and instead should just move straight down to Texas (I have NOT EVEN CONSIDERED telling him that instead of renting in PA, I am planning on buying a house before I move then rent it out - he would have a heart attack, he really doesn’t understand).What should I do?