As Jonathan noted, MANY agents are not worth your time of day.  

Look for shops that test and offer guarantees.For valued tenants or premium units: New appliances might be worth the investment for their reliability and long-term durability.Ultimately, your decision depends on your goals.

To scale successfully you have to get past the point where your newly increased expenditures exceed your increased revenue; past the point where your ROI allows you to “break even” on your investment, and past the point where the ROI is worth the increased risk, the increased aggravation, time, and “lifestyle” change, and past the point where you can step back from “operations” and concentrate on management.  

I've heard of people doing this, but you need to be rehabbing it enough to make it higher value so ideally you need to be purchasing something that needs some rehab so that you can increase the equity because otherwise you're not gonna have enough equity to pull out

It’s worth considering the trade-offs between the stability of income and the increased oversight and hoops you'll have to jump through.

At some point, the juice isn't worth the squeeze for us and we just want to enjoy life. 

It’s now estimated that Texas has 31.29 million residents, up from the 2020 count of 29.15 million.But Texas also ranked as the top state in the nation for domestic migration and natural increases over the past year.

Looking for a house we could house hack, had an incredibly low interest rate on mortgage and house has increased in value about 42%, an estimated 180k in equity.

If private companies continue to provide the insurance, I suspect we will see further increased premium costs which will need to be reflected in the rents tenants pay (all tenants: LTR, MTR, STR).  

Quote from @Noah Wright: No, but here are some ways to increase ARV most dramatically:1.