I am still in my early beginning stages too, but I recommend reading books to get the baseline knowledge down. 

So here’s the situation:My husband and I bought a SFR under an LLC in a transitional (early stage) neighborhood.

Always remember that in your proforma the expenses could be different, if you can lower the costs (in my example, you might be able to get a quote for $275 per door from an insurance company, but this is in a later stage of your analysis).Hope that helps!

It would exhaust a material portion of my own liquidity for the money down and closing/inspection costs, but I'd have a much more affordable loan than HML and this 2-stage approach seems simplest to me. 

You get long term finance and if one renter goes out you still could possibly have cash flow to pay the note.Another option is to buy a house in stage zero of a new home development where homes are just going up.

I currently am at this stage and just finished my first rental property at the end of the year.

My rule for rehabs have always been that I get quoted labor only costs and then I buy materials as needed in stages depending on the job.  

It sounds similar to what Virtual Staging Solutions has created for the staging industry...They charge per Project to 'virtually stage' a property. 

I can buy late stage FC (back into the asset with the FC done)  for 67% of AS IS value all day long on nice houses in the $250k to $1m+ range.

During your saving stage you then educate yourself on real estate, finances, state landlord laws, and investing in general.