Small commercial spaces add some risk, but they also diversify your income stream.

A walkthrough will show obvious issues, but a good home inspector will spend hours at the property to look at everything (especially areas not easily visible, like the crawl space and roof). 

If passive, consuming content and talking to people in the space and getting your money ready may be all you need to do.

This includes the size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and any additional features like a garage or outdoor space.

To become a true expert in the STR space it does take years of experience but right here on this forum is a good place to start. 

I agreed to a short stay South Korean booking in my shared space listing because it was both short and cheap but I would never agree to a longer stay South Korean booking or one that was for the expensive apartment.

Most successful flippers seem to be playing the volume game where they can get discounts scale or payroll a few contractors for the year.On the demand side, because low- to mid-tier inventory is so common, buyers are much more picky and seeing many more closing credits for little things: insulation in attic/crawl space, poly piping, half-life HVAC...they can ask for anything because it has become tougher to sell a flipped house especially because of the connotation they have with "flips" being cheap and half-done.

But, I'm not in the lending space.

The space is too competitive otherwise.

This strategy typically involves creating more rooms in a living space which costs about 2k per additional room but this strategy is possible with multifamily.