How do people profit from REI here in or around Cuba Missouri?

[Abby Smithson]

Hello, I am fairly new to REI. I am working on finding my third property at the moment which will happen after my first is sold (hopefully in a few weeks!). I have recently relocated to Cuba MO. I consider myself fairly educated on REI as a whole. I have taken state level property management courses (in Oregon), have been an avid listener to the BP podcast, and have read a fair amount of books on the subject.

The question here is how do people profit from REI in this sort of area. This is a town of around 3k people. This town has very low rents 450-600 average. There are tons of houses for sale but I'm not sure the stuff in town is selling very quickly so this, at least in my mind, rules out buy and hold plus flipping. This goes for the inner town limits. The property outside the limits seem to be worth more but still not that much unless there's is an immaculate house on it.

So how do people do it here? I don't want to reinvent the wheel but there really isn't any REI meet ups within an hour. I was thinking maybe buying and selling with owner finance because I actually think that is a great service to the public but I'd like to hear the communities ideas. And I know Rolla is only 20 min away which has a hospital and college but they seem to suffer from similar issues ( low population, rents, and growth).