I suspect Arizona has a clear advantage when it comes to affordability.

Hello, I am a freshman in college in Virginia and my university allows students to live off campus for the last 2 years of school, and most students take advantage of this opportunity because the on-campus housing is lacking to say the least.

Some banks offer the advantages of online and still have a brick and mortar presencence; Capital One.

I hope this will give me some advantage in my quest to build wealth through REI.  

But if you could lower your overhead by house-hacking, not only are you saving the $ difference every month, you're no longer throwing money away on rent, while building equity through loan paydown and property appreciation and taking advantage of rising rental income over time (plus various tax benefits). 

Maybe you could consult with an attorney that does not have an interest in either process but works with both processes and go over the advantages, disadvantages for both entities. 

You definitely want to network and take advantage of the connections the more experienced folks have made.

So, that tells me there may be something wrong with the properties in that the seller is trying to open the pool of buyers up to folks that would otherwise not qualify under traditional lending standards as well as opening it up to the possibility of financing where it may not be otherwise eligible.The high price tells me they may not know what they are doing or they are trying to really take advantage of folks that would not qualify for traditional lending.

This is pretty common to keep your first few purchases in your personal name in order to take advantage of high quality loans early on. 

I can't see much advantage to separate LLCs in this situation.