I highly recommend you travel to the market yourself and spend a couple days driving around, looking at various properties, if you are going to be buying anywhere.  

I buy blend and extends for cash nationally where I can extend the lease or backfill.I buy at 10 cap rate or higher.

Several of my STR investor clients here in Colorado have used a designer, and they generally pick a few statement pieces that they spend money on and then go with FB marketplace  or even IKEA for smaller items. 

Expect to spend a considerable amount of your time speaking to people.Expect to work dozens of hours/week with little to no immediate result.Expect most of your early interest from potential clients to come from your sphere of influence.Expect to go 3-6 months without getting paid (unless you do rentals which usually pay faster)Expect to be bombarded with distractions - mainly, people/companies marketing to you so that you choose their system for quick and easy buyer or seller leads.

Quote from @Corinne Snyder:Hi Michael, my CPA will not allow me to claim myself as a real estate professional with my one rental single-family home rental property because I do not spend enough hours per year running it, therefore he won't allow any overhead expenses to be claimed; only expenses related to the property directly.  

I would love to keep it as a rental but at this time I think it would take too long for the rent values to increase enough to make sense Worst case scenario is I have to hold the home for an extended period if the market decreases short term. 

Make sure you know what it's like to be an Agent before you spend thousands of dollars on MLS fees etc.. 

Go Big (4plex, spend 700k +) or 2.

Very difficult to operate low income housing through 3rd party management, especially over an extended period of time.

I can also tag it by property to easily pull P&L for each property.I am super happy with Baselane and excited to not have to spend so much time on bookkeeping and prepping things manually for my accountant.