Part of this is due to marketing and pre-marketing of the home - an agent is your marketer. 

I live in Honolulu currently but used to live in Tokyo (mother is Japanese) and still travel there on a regular basis (pre-Covid).

However, pricing in Austin is still substantially above pre-pandemic levels.

Your goal is to plant the idea in their mind and create a situation where selling to you feels like the easiest and most logical solution for them.If you haven’t already, the first step is to get pre-approved for a mortgage so you know what you could afford if you were to purchase the property conventionally.

A HYSA pays 4.5-5%(before rates went down) pre-tax, 3% net tax if you're a high earner. 

The only reason to look into franchises that flip houses or do renovations pre-sale is because you have existing business that you could leverage on top of this to add more clientele.

Paying off the notes, working to pre-emptively make repairs to capex items before they fail or become a major issue think roof, HVAC, and foundation.

The idea is to convert a multi-family building into condos; but not in the traditional sense where you separate pre-existing apartments into their own condos; but in a way where you combine the common areas of all of the apartments in that whole building, and turn the individual rooms within those apartments into condos themselves; thus transforming the hallways, kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, porches, balconies into common areas of the condos. 

That applies to replacement cost only and only if more $ is needed to restore the home to a pre-loss condition than what is available under coverage A.

I've found this to be super helpful: When someone inquires about the property Thank them and Send them the pre-requirements (Income, credit, no evictions) and ask if they meet them.