About to do my first flip and curious about Redfin, which appears to save a lot especially on the sell side vs. conventional agent. 

Most likely if the asset is investable, there are conventional mortgage or loan options available.

BUT, if you want to pull cash based on the appraised value and not the purchase price, you'll need to wait 12 months with conventional financing or 0-6 with a nonQM type of loan.

Hi Adelaide,For STR - you are going to get most of your business from all the sports events -- racing - Indy 500, football -Colts, NBA - Pacers, WNBA - Fever (Caitlyn Clark), We just hosted the Olympics swim trials, other events include Big Ten Championships, NCAA tournaments (NCAA headquarters here), and the Combine (recruitment for NFL).We also have a pretty busy convention center -- not huge like Vegas or Orlando, but it is solidly booked year round with events like ComiCon, GenCon, Firefighters Association, Future Farmers of America, Candy Expo, and various others.For MTR, you are looking mostly at traveling nurses and medical personnel, you also may get contract workers for the larger corporations like Lilly, Sales Force, or Rolls Royce.Happy to hop on a call and discuss further.

For a conventional mortgage, at closing, the lender wants you to maintain a homeowner's policy and so I'm trying to understand the consequences of changing the policy post closing. 

There really isn't cash flow anywhere right now without some kind of niche or angle.If you buy a miscellaneous, "lower cost" house around the median in PA or OH, and put conventional or DSCR debt on it... it's not going to cash flow.And you really need to be hands-on somehow, whether that's literally your own or a trusted team. 

The issues we ran into were being pre-approved for a mortgage much lower than what most houses in our area are selling for, and finding houses that were in our price range did not qualify for conventional mortgages.

I think you just have to follow any leads you can and bang on a lot of doors.In the meantime, though, here's another possible strategy:Do a conventional Homestyle rehab loan (you would qualify for less, but it wouldn't be THAT much less), and once it's all fixed up, re-fi into the VA loan.  

Refinance to a conventional loan.Use approx. 6 months to save for down payment and look for the next property to house hack.

Conventional financing requires 12 months of seasoning.