@Mary Schr  I'm sorry about the loss of your mom. 

So from a cash flow perspective it's a $24k/a year loss.

My first house was bought through FHA first time homebuyers program, i then got the CHENOA down payment program and had the sellers pay all closing costs. 

The biggest problem I see is that the second house is one with which we would want to take advantage of the FHA 203K program and I have heard that you can only use the FHA loan for the purchase of your FIRST property, and by the time we finally go under contract on that one, we'll potentially already have purchased our "first home". 

REITs1) act like a mutual fund so liquid2) ordinary income so taxed at your tax rate3) returns are unpredictable4) intangible assetReal Estate1) less liquid (you'd want to hold for at least a year or more)2) returns can be projected based on the Actuals used as an input3) long term hold offers you sometimes losses in the first few years via depreciation deduction and then long term cap gains taxed at a max of 20%4) actual asset

Slow and steady with no loss is actually a faster way to wealth then pedal to the metal with a couple BKs or foreclosures in the middle.

Freddy Mac has a program called Home possible that you might be able to use for a conventional loan with 5% down.

I understand the guidelines to qualify for delayed financing for permanent residents but I wanted to find out if there is a delayed financing program for foreign investors.Is there someone I can talk to for such program?

Home Possible not only has minimum income requirements to qualify for the loan (with DTI), they also have income CAPS which LIMIT the amount of income you CAN make in order to qualify for the program. 

Ifnyounearn more than $150k at your W2 job, your passive losses can not be deducted from your active income.