If you're actively managing your own portfolio, working p/t or business owner, and on top of it investing as LP in syndications, then your situation may differ from those who're f/t W-2 employees and are purely  LPs in syndications. 

Real estate agents make money purely off of their knowledge and information and network.

If you filled up with gas once this year, saving you $5,000 in gas (that's a LOT of miles you do to save that much in gas), you must spend a lot of time sitting by the side of the road with an extension lead waiting for the batteries to charge.

Pure honesty!!

After hiring an attorney and tracking down the original developer (which was pure luck) who wrote the covenants, we were able to get an affidavit from him stating that his intent was in fact to permit short term rentals.

That’s my pure strategy tbh.

So, I basically would have to find a home that is in need of purely cosmetic renovations at a really low price to actually make a profit.

Save the custom build until you're older and have lived in a few places.Look for a MFR (I think 3- or 4-unit properties are way better than duplexes), live there a few years, and then turn it into a pure investment property.

“Who” can most easily absorb a financial hit is purely subjective and isn’t relevant.Home owners certainly “should” have reserves for financial catastrophes like ones that I have endured.  

Are you going to be owner occupying the property, or is this purely for investment?