Great place to start.The FHA is a good choice.  

If the borrower performs, we will negotiate a modification.  

You chose to live in southern Florida and that is your choice.  

Borrow the money for the downpayment. - I can pay off my cards and rent out my current condo (lender says if i have a signed lease i can count 75% of it as income).

The Raleigh market is not cheap - unless you are willing to go into seriously sketchy parts of town (definitely not recommended, especially not for a newbe).Once you have an idea as to how much you can borrow "the traditional way", you can decide to move forward or whether to explore other options (@Brandon Turner  wrote the book on those).

I have not went back and borrowed any of our equity's.

@Jon Holdman  having had to foreclose unfortunately on my share of borrowers during the crash I got educated in the small print where my first 25 years or so lending I never even read the small print.. its when things go wonky that the small print matters  :)

Buying cash, and borrowing once the property is in my hands: has this worked for anyone?

Out of the choices, I like Florida, but here is my favorite:  TexasCheck out how big Collin and Denton Counties are projected to be in 35 years.

Question about podcast 106 with Mike Sumsky If borrower is behind and the property is worth 100k.