I'm in Tx so your laws may vary and I'm not an attorney:You have a choice to severance the mineral estate from the surface estate. 

There are loans available for properties that are in more rural areas and those that need rehabbing where you can borrow the repair costs, too.

My thinking is if its that hammered and the sellers perception is they have no choices but me..... well that will be a great negotiation!

Also, if you can replace that $418/month car payment with something around the $200/month (or even lower) range, you'd increase your borrowing power even more.Good luck, Doel!

The tenant only has the choice of buying the home at the agreed at price of the option contract or loose his money at the end of the contract.The rent is a separate issue as you mentioned.

At the end of this message is a link to a financial model that you are welcome to borrow if you want to model the cashflows of your property.  

Every situation is different but one thing that is constant is cash is currently cheap to borrow but doesn't seem to be staying that way for much longer (Much longer is relative).

But that is obviously the easiest and best choice.

Additionally it probably wont be this easy or cheap to buy a house for a long time, because most people believe the overall RE trend has stabilized and is bullish, add to that the fact that money will probably not be cheaper to borrow than it is now for 10-20 years (if ever), and you can see why investors are betting that the new homeowner trend will shrink while the renter trend increases. 

That income can be used but its an isolated circumstance.The only program on conventional that allows the use of boarder income outside of the exception i mentioned above is MCM- My community Fannie Mae but it requires the borrower make under the area median income (depending on county) and has no other properties owned at the time of funding.I work with many investors who house hack on the lending end and have personal experence in house hacking as Brandon would call it.