A local property manager will make this much easier and handle the visits for you.Single-family homes can still do well, even with more apartments popping up, as they cater to tenants who want privacy and space.

I'm not even sure how salary got introduced into this scenario but I'd prefer to discuss solutions and explore ways to get to the objective. 

It will be even harder as a young person with no life experience, and particularly no experience buying real estate. 

I made a great connection with that property owner and proved the concept since he was unfamiliar and hadn't even heard of rental arbitrage.

Expense ratio, as others have stated, often ends up evening out these fluctuations in each expense and can often times be a more accurate predictor over many data points.

Also, focus on 2 years of job/income stability.Class D Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, all cashflow with little, maybe even negative, relative rent & value appreciationVacancy Est: 20%+ should be used to cover nonpayment, evictions & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores under 560 (almost 30% probability of default), little to no good tradelines, lots of collections & chargeoffs, recent evictions.

BiggerPockets also has a calculator to analyze deals, and I highly recommend you start this as soon as possible, even if you are not ready to buy.

Even for this one there's a big maybe as regional asset class everywhere is experiencing cap rate compression as well inc. these two asset classes.

As Jay mentioned they must be NMLS licensed if owner occupant of in several states even commercial needs licensing.The NMLS is like the database, each state has a division of banking that oversees lending requirements then you also on the federal level have CFPB as well as consumer protection laws.I want to add that I believe yesterday the CFPB is undergoing changes, but if it goes away that does not mean that many of the laws in place especially consumer protection laws would go away. 

You can still find single-family homes in the $80k–$100k range and duplexes in the $130k–$150k range, even in C and C+ neighborhoods that are seeing steady improvements.