If it burns to the ground, well.. as long as I can walk away with out owing anything and have a few years of income off of it - then I don't much care if it gets rebuilt or sits as a green space. 

You could call some local credit unions and see of they have credit builder loans. you put say $1000 in a secured savings account and borrow against it as an installment loan pay it off in a year, I'm sure there are other ways but sometimes you need to pay the toll to cross the bridge.

You can use blown insulation or you can get a 2 lbs. closed cell polyurethane froth pack from Foam it Green spray foam insulation and spray the underside of the roof.

Now you can advertise that your green!

Worth checking out (some googling should get you the programs - TD Cross Border Banking is the one I've used personally to handle all my cross border banking needs, although never got a mortgage with them).Hope this helps - I'm sure if you give some more details around what hurdles you're trying to get past (financing, finding properties, property management, cross-border tax issues, etc.) you'll get lots of advice!

Don't be haphazard about it, you don't have to take the first deal that crosses your path.  

Nice to live there if you don't have to go downtown or cross town.  

Make sure you're cross chexking woth other websites like rentometer, zilpy, and others.

     @Jeff Cross          Jeff, it is absolutely acceptable to structure your offer any way you please.

We're on a 5 year mission (without the green chicks) to get out of the rat race.