The will force me to be more general and make certain assumptions.  

My thoughts were to build up some equity along the way and get locked into a good interest rate on a humble starter home and then when I sell 5-7 years down the road and trade up, I can use that equity (from appreciation, forced appreciation, and payments towards principle)  towards a downpayment on our true family home. 

It's not just losing the work force, but stores will have less income and may have to lay off American workers and so on.

You need to make sure the terms are arms length compliant I would assume in case of an audit. 

I joined the Air Force at 18, spent six years enlisted, and was fortunate to acquire an amazing set of skills that allowed me to exit the military at 24 and begin making in the six figure income.

Force insurance if one is not in place2.

I think it would be great to hear what the bigger pockets community would do in this position:If forced to re-start from the beginning with no capital, no credit, and no connections, what would your first step be.

The general trend seems to be that the landlord has to show he tried to lease the property but couldn't.You don't have to offer a month to month lease but realistically not giving your tenants that option could force you to find new tenants.

The property's condition obviously must be one that I can utilize some force appreciation.

But here in San Francisco buildings (especially 2-units, but again let's pretend it's a SFH) are held by tenancy-in-common and people are given fractional TIC loans (typically 5 or 7/1 ARMs, .5-1% higher).