Once you have built some equity couple years down the line, refinance out of it and get the cosigner off the loan- If you have good credit and little debt, you can even get a conventional loan at 3% down (vs 3.5% for FHA) which has cheaper PMI (vs much more expensive MIP for FHA) and is more lax in terms of regulations- Finally, if this doesn't work, you can certainly go the DSCR route/owner financing but it's not cheap/easy (Seasoned investors/pros make seller financing sound easier than it is.

Depending on your states laws, contract for deeds allow the seller to take possession of the property without the standard foreclosure procedures.Some states (one of those being Texas) have enacted strict regulations around selling a property with a contract for deed or any other type of executory contract.

A regulated Self-Directed IRA custodian cannot give tax, legal or investment advice, nor sell investment products.  

That's probably as far as they went and agents don't spend their time reading financial regulations, at least not many.

It's too dependent on changing weather, government subsidies and the commodities market to be a good bet.

Section 8 is a government housing program run by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and is administered by a local housing authority (HA).

And the latter of which is highly regulated.  

Cleaning up the county government is a much saner (if seriously challenging) way to go, in my opinion.  

As for extra costs of owning in an LLC, you will have to account for the cost of maintaining your business entity with the state and local government along with complying with any state or federal tax reporting regulations.

Such fees are generally regulated by state law, you can't just make up some big number as a deterrent. :)