All of our friends that went away to college are now moving back in with their parents, and I am seeing this as a great opportunity for us to rent out one or both of our spare bedrooms to our friends.

Trying to avoid moving twice. 2 - My family owns a condo in UT I could potentially move into as a last resort (it is occupied with a spare room).

When I graduated and decided to look for a rental, my dad suggested I buy a house and rent out the spare bedrooms.

This means estimating ARV, rehab, and getting the deal under contract with some room to spare. 

I own a condo in Reston and rent out the spare rooms.  

The problem is when i was working all those hours if I had any spare time it was spent with my children or sleeping. 

Would selling two or all three of the income producing ones be enough for brother to buy your wife out of the one(s) dad and brother live in, and also have some amount of cash to spare to split so that they have an amount of cash incentive to “replace” (mentally in the short term) the current monthly cash flow?

He would also help with the rehab when he had spare time.

Concerning single family homes, would it be a better to try to find a habitable fixer-upper and work on it in my spare time to increase the value over time to resell or should I plan to pay off and eventually rent out? 

Its finer than gravel and over time gets compacted down to almost look like a solid surface.