I'm considering buying a small single family home near a hospital in the Midwest to turn into a MTR, and trying to decide if it's worth the investment to furnish vs. going straight to LTR.

In 2008 a friend of mine spend $300,000 to buy 100 houses in Detroit.  

Investment Info:Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

If you plan to buy in your hometown, buy a 2-4 unit, and live in one of the units.

I’m currently house hacking and planning to buy my next property in about 6 months.

Joint ventures entail utilizing your own money to buy properties with others.

They are just going to use their 2nd VA loan to buy their next one while this one is tied up. 

Imagine making millions of dollars over the course of your career and then having to pay 30-50% every year to uncle sam instead of compounding that cash over time.This is exactly what real estate professionals have learned to mitigate.To reduce their taxable income, they just buy a building every year, do a cost seg, and use depreciation to reduce their tax liability dramatically.Their personal wealth snowball grows much larger and much faster than their W2 counterparts who give most of their money back to the government each year.Following this strategy as a real estate professional is one of best ways to end up with a much larger net worth at the end of your career.

I have many clients buying the older homes in North Phoenix near the north 101 as they are 20-30 years old, in need of updates, but also are poised for the long term growth from TSMC and other business/economic activity in the area. 

Then, if you can trend over time you'll want to see where the "path of progress" is going/moving and attempt to buy in that path of progress to gain some appreciation in the future.