How will you do so if you are W-2 employed?

A furnished mid-term rental or month to month lease can be well worth the small incremental monthly cost for this flexibility if you are serious about finding a great live in flip candidate on your timeline, not that of your employer's. 

I am currently employed as a project engineer working for a GC that builds multi-family projects.

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

Having watched many prior co-workers get paid, cash their check at the casino, and promptly deposit it all into a slot machine I can tell you with pretty good certainty that casinos don't have a positive effect on disposable income and good use of the existing income in the area surrounding :)Are there solid local employers OTHER than the casino in a 15-minute drive? 

Have you been employed as an Abstractor? 

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.

My husband and his partners sold their company, and he is transitioning out of full time employment there in the next couple of months.  

But, they will be in challenging parts of town where realistically you do not want to own property and your long-run returns will under-perform.I'd encourage you to find a balance of sub-market growth, nearby employment, strong income, and only then a good rent-to-value ratio. 

Given that I am self employed, a few personal loan options, did preliminary asking about my situation, and they got lost in the weeds with how my real estate income looks so dismal on tax returns.