I have cut out all music and have been listening to the podcast and audiobooks for the past week while I drive for work trying to gain as much information as I can.       

Your standards need to drive the property management company. 

It definitely depends on a lot of factors - where non-QM is generally going to be about 0.5%-1% higher in rate, but can be more than that or even lower than conventional with some more options - one in particular is if you did a longer prepayment penalty period (5 years - at a descending penalty structure or even 5% all five years), then that could drive the rate down even significantly lower than the conventional alternative.

I had to have my wife drive so I can work on my laptop.

But I never liked "work like crazy and drive a Flintstones car and reuse plastic bags until you have $2M, and then put the entire $2M into stocks and hope for the best."

I'd still be working for "the man" in IT driving 60 miles each way to work and spending 3 hours in one meeting on one silly, meaningless report.     

There has been significant growth, especially with tech giants like Intel, Meta, Amazon, and Google setting up operations (2 data centers), driving up property prices and job opportunities.

Lockbox installationKey duplication, meeting locksmiths, digital lock code changesMeeting cleaners, landscapers, tradespeopleProperty walk-throughs via phone and/or video conferencing Move-in and move-out inspectionsPlacing signage on propertiesPhotos and videosProperty description copy writingScheduling contractors and tradespeople for vacant propertiesStatus reports on contractor/tradespeople progressProperty drive byMail pickupDocument delivery

The only properties I have bought out of state are turnkeys or ones I can drive to in a few hours or less.

You can drive by them, you can maybe press your nose against a window to look and see what you can see if the property is abandoned... but you don't know what you don't know about the property.We have bought 4 properties through foreclosure.  3 worked out about as we expected.