Anyone can live anywhere they want if they have the money, and sometimes houses are bought and then rented out without much background checking on the people moving in.

Quote from @Zachary Deal: Choose neutral safe tones and get nice materials but don't splurge too much on very fancy cabinets, counters, appliances that someone else may not value the same as you.This is so true.

@Lincoln Bartlett You will need to use propertyradar, propwire, or propstream to create lists and reach out to distressed homeowners via postcard or text message.

The biggest question you need to ask yourself is if you are doing this to afford a property you otherwise couldn’t afford or to save money period, that will lead to very different conclusions about where/if to buy. 

But if your PITI is $105k, then not so much.

If you are hiring a PM, then it's not a big difference either way, but if self-managing you don't want to go much bigger than you have been or you may not be able to do all the work.

I am looking at doing an SBA loan but at their asking price it would still need over 100k. 

As you look to scale, just make sure to hold/build reserves for when repairs come up and take your time screening tenants as you will find a vacant unit is much less stressful than dealing with a bad tenant.

Any reason why you need a "private person" here? 

High credit scores and low DTI are often required…and these take much longer than I first thought…Navy might take 45 days to get through the gauntlet.