Thus, I have worked 2 jobs (1  is self employment) for 7 years to fund purchasing a few single family homes locally. 20k is not enough to purchase IMO, that should be your savings AFTER your purchase.

Be mindful of short-term capital gains tax, as profits from flips held for less than a year are taxed as ordinary income, and frequent flipping may result in self-employment taxes.While profits from flips do not qualify for 1031 exchanges (since flips are considered inventory, not investment properties), you can minimize your tax burden by deducting allowable expenses like renovation costs, loan interest, and holding expenses.If you're considering diversifying into rentals, explore opportunities to benefit from long-term tax advantages such as depreciation and lower long-term capital gains rates.

Our manager looks at employment, rental history.

For me it was not necessarily that and frankly most 9 to 5 weekend off parents get way more time with the kiddos than self employed folks that are striving to build up their investments.

I would try to maximize revenue through things like additional marketing/platforms for example adding VRBO in addition to Airbnb etc, as well as employing pricing software.

For those of you that have good w2 income and want to take advantage of employer matching (100% return!)

Your ad should require "proof of income" not proof of employment.

The higher credit, higher income, gainfully employed S8 tenants are choosy about where they live and do not want to live in a bad, high crime area.By buying in an area that appeals to high quality S8 tenants, the arbitrage that you might see between S8 being higher than market might disappear.So that being said, it’s more important to lead by location than strategy.Happy to talk further if you like.  

Usually MTR comes fully furnished with utilities included, so you pay for the convenience.if the area has traveling nurses, other professionals that come for a few months for work they normally pay more, in certain cases the employer pays the rent not familiar with that particular market,  but worth looking into it.

They tend to all have good incomes, little to no credit, and are self employed with lots of family.