I am sorry for not answering your questions directly, but your post makes you potentially a very easy victim for fraud or at least a sucker for a bad investment.  

Some tenants may think I'm a sucker for doing it (wife does), but houses are expensive items and tenants are often idiots.

Lots of houses you can get into using other means I'd bet

The benefits of this house over that are 1) its a SFH rather than a duplex, so you aren't sharing a building/driveway with another family, 2) this house is a good chunk bigger in terms of SF, 3) the duplex has 2 outdoor parking spots, this has an attached 2 car garage, 4) the duplex has no real yard but the SFH has a nice sized fenced in back yard, 5) less traffic at night on the street (but still these are both on busy 4 lane streets).I'm assuming 1800 because I think that's a safe bet.  

That house is a couple of years older, but in similar condition and 200 square feet larger.Pull the listing and re-list at $199,000, and I bet you get interest.

We get this all the time and your best bet is to be honest.

Agree, best bet is to find a partner or see if the owner is willing to carry the note while you operate.  

I bet you could, it's kind of like buying subject to the sellers old mortgage.

Her best bet would be to take out a line of credit.

We are a couple of late-20s full-time working stiffs who want to get started in the buy and hold space.Motivated by @Brandon Turner's podcast stories, we think a house hack may be our best bet to start off.