I'm a student athlete at OU wrapping up my undergrad this fall, with plans to pursue grad school soon.

They moved, as renters, into our suburban neighborhood in 2019 for the schools given that their first child was starting kindergarten. 

While there is nothing magical about $0 cash flow -$1000 is not going to scale for you unless the market cooperates big time.

It's not like HGTV when a scene cuts and now the floors, and plumbing are magically finished.

If I wait to post the house till the renovations are complete I probably wont be able to have someone move in till September 1st which is past when schools gets in session.

Since I need to think about sending my daughter school in a couple of years, I want to start with duplex.

Neighborhoods and schools may be more important than cashflow so your strategy may have some holes.

We start asking for near top-of-market rent and notice when we decrease rent 5-10% after the first week or two of marketing that magically the tenants with longer rental histories, no evictions and stable (but not necessarily lucrative) jobs start showing interest in the listing. 

I got voodoo'd by this on the very last house I bought, where I am *certain* the bank would have come down another $2k but the selling agent magically produced another offer that was going to come up $1k from the bank's offer in order to "entice" me to take the bank's "final" offer.

With so little inventory and bid wars , and hundreds of showings of each property to some fake buyer who never intends to buy house, I don't think Erics in this game are in any particular disadvantage compared to "licensed" REAs (licensed is in quotation marks,  since a lot of people seem to put too much significance into obtaining it, as if it was a law degree from Ivy League school).