I think it might make more sense for me to live in the house to eliminate holding costs and do some of the rehab myself (which I know nothing about).My goal is to make $2000 per month of passive income from rentals, heck even $800 would be a life changing amount, but my current life situation makes it extremely difficult for me to save money and leaves me with little to spend, thus I can only afford maybe a $40k mortgage.It's really difficult to see where I can fit into this, maybe I'm just fooling myself and I cannot enter real estate?

The whole town is certainly fitting for celebrities as they love Tulum.  

But the "play it safe and careful" just doesnt fit my character.

Look at this linkhttps://www.nps.gov/nr/regulations.htm#6015 specifically sec. 60.15a) Grounds for removing properties from the National Register are as follows: (1) The property has ceased to meet the criteria for listing in the National Register because the qualities which caused it to be originally listed have been lost or destroyed, or such qualities were lost subsequent to nomination and prior to listing;Sounds like yours fits this criteria.

Just cut yourself a check for whatever amount you want and use it as you see fit. 

Often times, they are doing it to do their due diligence on the area but you can accomplish that by making a trip  to your market before hand and getting to know the neighborhoods that fit your criteria so that when something comes available, you can pull the trigger quickly.

I've looked into all sorts of loans, and it would seem an SBA 504 loan would be a great fit for our financial needs, but given that we are still trying to acquire the property, it's long processing time (months and months I'm told) makes things very difficult.

For instance if someone fits all of the minimum requirements above and has a 570-580 credit score we will take a closer look at the specifics of their credit report. 

They are all looking at some key metric (or a variety of metrics) that is important to them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their conclusions are going to be the right fit for you.

The friendly/family environment has been a great place to learn how to be an Investor-focused Agent and I can work any type of deals knowing I have a direct line to the DB for when I need answers to new questions/challenges.If you're interested in scheduling an appointment with the Designated Broker, Steve Fowler, to see if the brokerage would be a good fit I can arrange that.