Good gurdy man, $180,000 gross income with 4 employees is SLIM! 

I doubt it is nearly that simple but it does have a slim basis of truth. 

The likelihood of that though is very slim.

There is a slim chance that the tenant was that great to begin with if they leave in the middle of the night. 

It's true that the picking are slim and most are inexperienced compared to larger markets but they are there.

You'd be talking about very low priced homes even after rehab, so unless you have a construction crew that will basically charge you at cost and will never go over budget, it's slim margins at best.

Even then the numbers are just too slim to let me pull the trigger on one or two units I would really like to chase.

Until the number of homes for sales goes up significantly the chance for home prices to drop in any kind of significant way is very slim. 

As said above if you 1031 you're forced to identify your new purchase in 45d, and give how hot things are there's a slim change you'd find something worth the money, so you could buy a sub par asset, or be stuck holding the money and eat the capital gains - could be a mess. 

I was initially looking for multifamily deals but the deals have been slim to none so I have expanded my scope to single family residential househacking.Can anyone please provide any best practices?