I do shy away from small cheap houses - 3/1 or 2/1 in bad areas or that are on a pier and beam type foundation.

As per the TK provider business model, property was bought cheap and rehab done (work provided).

Lastly, the price point is still very cheap here in the sense that you can still find investment deals that hit the 1% rule for 120-180k!

Property manager and assistant property manager (as your direct contact)cheap, fast, and good - typically you can only pick two

Currently there is that extremely thin, hard, cheap landlord carpeting (and also an area with cheap thin stick on hard tile squares). 

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

Harder to qualify for cheap/free money as you collect more homes. 

One golden rule I follow,if it takes a long time to fix/replace when it breaks, don't buy a cheap one.Imagine, this thing breaks in the middle of your peak season and the people who can come out to rebuild are 2 weeks out....It takes at least a day or two to build something like this even if you are super skilled.

Boots on the ground is hyperlocal, and what you're looking for is essentially cheap labor that can open a door when you need it.

@Asim G. if owners weren't so short-sightedly cheap, PMC's wouldn't be doing this!