Lease options are the vehicle of choice here, until I sort out how to get to the other side of the ceiling imposed by debt to income ratio.

Operators tell me that the objection to the costs are from the children of the elder who don’t want mom to spend down her savings, fearing that she will run out of money and that there will not be any left to pass down to the kids.

From experience I can say that it is way harder, you have to find absolute home run deals instead of base hit deals and do often take on much higher risk. 

You could run into issues down the line without one, depending on your business structure.  

I'd try to call a few agents and see if they can run sold comps.Once you have access to sold homes, there's nothing to get caught up on.

Network with an agent who has worked with house hackers and start looking at properties and running your numbers. 

Ask anyone who ever tried to sell a cash flowing biz, it's not that easy (compared to selling a house)The best play IMO is to run a business and feed the profits into real estate.There are a million ideas, but you can start here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/biggerpockets-business-podcast

With all of these tools I felt like I have what I need to be comfortable with running my own properties. 

Its interest income - unless you wanted to run it through a C corp but then you pay corp tax first.Other option is to use a deferred retirement account. 

If you run into an agent who refuses to accept contracts, they are in violation.