Beating the Dallas Heat - appraising two strategies

[Daniel Porter]

Battling between two strategies right now for my first rental property purchase, and equally terrified of both. For the record, i work regularly in downtown Dallas, so consider commute costs (time and money)...

Strategy 1.) Fixing up a horrid duplex in a rougher (C+) neighborhood.
Specifically, looking at Arlington, North/mid oak cliff (currently renting in North Oak cliff and i'm not getting stabbed every day, despite popular belief lol), or North Fort Worth areas. Couldn't live for FREE, but once i moved out, it would cashflow pretty well considering the current rises in MFH prices. 

pros: privacy, better (more easily appraised) rent rates, 
cons: getting into construction jobs i can't quite calculate as accurately, not having enough cash to cover it 

lots of these houses won't go FHA203k, because of how many offers mine would be competing with, and i'd really have to sweet talk a hardmoney lender to get some capital secured, because i look pretty awful on paper. 

Strategy 2.) House Hacking a SFH near a hub
There is much less competition for SFHs in DFW, imho. Most of the times, these MFHs are going to all cash offers in under a week, generally to out of state investors, etc., and even in these C+ neighborhoods i'm referring to. I'm currently sharing a house right now and i wouldn't mind having roommates. I'd look to buy near a "hub"" hospitals with 3,000 plus jobs or colleges, like SAGU in waxahachie, community college in lancaster, near UTA in arlington, near UNT/TWU in denton. 

pros: easily managed, easily bought and sold, less risk in getting a less destroyed property, accurately know the costs of minor renovations
cons: lower (more unpredictable) rental demand for a shared room, longer commutes (higher cost) from outskirts, less privacy. 

Right now i'm leaning towards strategy 1, but i'm not sold. These duplexes are terrifying, especially having very little background in home renovation. I'm all for it, if i can budget it into the cost. 

What are y'all doing to deal with the dallas market? What would you recommend a 25yr old first time residential real estate investor to do? I think DFW can sustain the increase, personally, so i don't think a bust is coming soon, but i do think there might be a market readjustment for MFH if a large portion of investors start substituting to SFRs or other vehichles instead of MFHs. 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated. love to get a conversation started on this. i'm sure many out of state investors could benefit from this as well.