Up to you and your realtor what you choose to use, but for example if you get the appraisal district to decrease the size, then you can't use that when you resale.Now that I look at your floorplan, my guess is it is the 3rd car garage. 

For example, if you were to use the same amount of acquisition capital to buy/live anywhere in the country or would you still choose that house?

You can still choose to do so, so you are not just deferring the cost to a couple years later, but know that this will eat into your equity.   

Get a pre approval, any reputable lender should do it for free.

You get to choose.

Make sure you ask for 5 references and that they have a good reputation amongst the real estate investing local community!

Can you maybe give some insight on why you’d choose Indianapolis and any preferred agents, contractors, lenders, etc that I could reach out to would be awesome!

If not, you get to choose. 

I'd rather have as little of my own money in a deal as possible, so if my only choices were 20% or 25%, I'd choose 20%, but honestly, I try to find ways to keep all my money out of the deal, period.I'll borrow so I can offer cash on a property and get it at a cheaper price so that when I refinance, even though they keep "25%" equity in the house, the refinance is on a higher value than what I paid.

I search for properties in A or B towns that have strong school systems, low crime, and good reputations.