I have dozens of clients doing this in New Jersey most of which come from no construction background, they simply use preferred vendors we have in place (not GC's) which lowers renovations cost because there is no middle man. 

just don't do a lease. as others have mentioned, this forces the buyer of the property to take over the lease (if its even allowed/ they qualify) and it certainly does make the property a little tougher to sell. i'm also doing a house hack, and here in CA, its made a world of difference for me. the bulk of our energy usage is in the summer when we want to run the a/c. my bill stays a constant $228/mo (i pocketed the tax credit and simply financed the panels after that grace period). instead of getting an $800 bill in the summer months, we run the a/c at a constant temperature 24/7 on auto, stay comfortable, and i typically get a little bit coming back at the end of the year. don't expect to pocket this "little bit back" by being conservative with your useage, it sort of is a use-it-or-lose-it situation... i think i got $54 back this year.

At a 500-700k budget, I'd look at a 2-4 unit property in places like East Nashville, Colorado Springs, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, VA, maybe Salt Lake City (though that budget might not cut it there).

There were simply too many things about this particular one I do not like so I’m staying away.

Who cuts the grass? 

If you get a little further out from LSU, you can probably buy in the mid $200k range and cut $200-$300/month out of that.

If you plan to do multifamily in the "Far" suburbs it can be harder to hit your cashflow targets VS city/near burbs simply because there is limited inventory. 

I’ve had the house for 6 month and I feel like there’s so much deferred maintenance that I can’t keep up, should I cut my losses and sell the house?

Do that for a year or two and then help that owner buy another and you take a cut in the deal maybe in exchange for management. 

A deal that produced a 25% net IRR to investors with a 1% acquisition fee, 1% asset management fee, simply pref + single tier waterfall, etc, may only produce a 15% net IRR under the current fee and carry structure, if their acq fee went to 3%, pref went down, they now have a GP catchup and multi-tier waterfall giving them higher splits for higher returns, etc.