It takes that long to pay off your closing costs, rent-ready costs, early turnovers, etc. 

The most important rule is to have the cash flow of the new property be able to pay all its expenses, mortgage, AND the line of credit back.

And they won’t do it quick just because you want to buy so you would need to close with some estimates on the sale bill.  

  ( i have owned 3 brokerages over the years and will stand behind those numbers).in the RE training space my thoughts are :5 to 10% of folks that pay for training do anything with it.

If the tenant is claiming to be living in a hotel, she may try to get you to reimburse for that cost unless section 8 has a new process to reimburse them for this... which sounds absurd but I'll let you deduce whether or not you're dealing with someone who is used to paying for things out of their own pocket. 

Now, you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.

The biggest challenge we faced is the property's proximity to a railroad, which has proven to be an impediment to the sale.

., get a higher paying job, work two jobs, go to trade school, get a higher paying degree, live in affordable area, etc...these are things that most of us did).

Namely, that if a tenant (in this case accompanied by a whole family) ends up stop paying rent and I would be on the hook for both covering the mortgage and dealing with open ended legal costs and time.

That being said, your typical cost of capital is as follows:EquityAgency debtBalance Sheet local lenderDebt FundPrivate DebtPref EquityHard Money DebtBookie/Loan SharkOther things that will impact capital sources: are you wanting to finance the improvements, or will you pay for those from equity/cash flow?