You can make great profits flipping houses, but you can also lose a ton if you don't do it right.That said, I encourage you to be in touch with an investor friendly agent in Indy.

However as you correctly point out this is far more risky and or its risk capital compared to buying a income property.. but the reward can be strati-spherically higher .. not just a little bit but it can be life changing profits on some of these deals.

I found a killer deal, put 1k down as EMD and then wholesaled it for a nice profit. 

Give them a portion of the profits from the STRs and have a buy-out clause when you have the funds to refinance.I am sure there are many other potential options for you to look into, but just off the top of my head these 5 came to mind.

In my experience, a garage ADU can still be profitable with long-term rentals, but you'll need to crunch the numbers carefully. 

While you might lean towards long-term tenants for stability, short-term rental platforms like Airbnb can yield higher profits if the building allows it.When you get to Miami, I’d recommend visiting a few meetups hosted by South Florida REIA.

110% profit Lessons learned?

Quote from @Evan Polaski: @Jay Hinrichs, while I wasn't going to call them MLM, I did attend an Armando Montelongo (A&E's Flip this House from mid 2000's) seminar at a hotel conference room in 2007 or 08, which was the free funnel to spend $1,500 for a three day seminar or $25,000 for an in-person mentorship.I have seen similar promoted with Christina and Tarrek from Flip or Flop more recently.I didn't start realizing how profitable education can be until the last 5 or so years.  

Why not take the profit without the tax hit?

"How in God's name do they plan on making a profit" would come out of my mouth all the time.