typically (as you probably know) you buy something distressed, with either cash or hard money, you fix it up, and then you refinance into long term debt. 

Since you're a citizen but you live and work abroad you'd still qualify mostly for second homes occupancy or investor non owner occupancy (primary is hard to claim if your job requires you to be physically next to the office as an example so an underwriter isnt going to readily believe you unless you can get HR to write you a letter to state you're remotely capable of earning this income/job duties anywhere).Hopefully that helps let me know if you have further questions into mortgage planning.

Raising rents to market levels is a big deal and hard to do. 2.

When trying to avoid paying interest, best to hit early, hit hard (as big as you can) and hit often.

The one cost will be getting the units furnished, but if you live in the area it isn't hard to source a bunch of decent 2nd hand furniture on Craigslist or FB market

It's just not that hard of a job to do with a system in place and frankly it's too expensive in our opinion.

Without evidence, it's hard to say.First, you should educate all of your tenants to report excessive noise to the police.

Without knowing any of your financial position of your work or side hustles it is hard to give you exact advice because you may be able to carry these homes until they are paid off and in that case they would provide solid returns, but there are likely better real estate investments out there.  

-Ryan MartinezFlipper and Hard Money Lender

Most of the investors I talk with have a hard time finding deals that work on the market.The investors that I work with are finding that New Construction is a good option.