I have zero retirement savings and am eager to start building a passive-income portfolio so I am not a burden to my child.One of my biggest hurdles is that I need to boost my income so that in the bank's eyes I can afford the mortgage payment BEFORE collecting any rent.

Owner-occupied loans are a fantastic way to reduce your capital invested and boost CoC but don't expect to refi into an investment loan after only a year unless you put significant work into the property.

So if you find something that a bank is willing to lend on, it will likely be tougher to boost the ARV enough to make it a true BRRRR.2 - if you finance up front AND refi, you pay financing / closing costs twice. 

While we have not had anything this dramatic we have had cleanouts leak sewage onto city sidewalks that was caused by the city digging up the street but they still made us responsible. 

I was thinking of buying a 3/2.5 condo that needs a little TLC and doing some work on it to boost the value and the rent I can charge, then renting out the unused rooms.

Retail cap rates are dramatically higher because loans cost more (on top of other factors).  

but unless interest rates change dramatically i can't think of anything that's passive and get's me 5%.i understand that there are risks in DST just like any other real estate investment.

Perhaps you should even house hack to boost ROI even further by also saving on rent every month.

My suggestion would be to, instead of beating your head against that "below market" wall in hot markets, find a creative strategy that boosts effective income generation.

In the past few months, supply has dwindled extensively and we haven't found anything we liked, also prices have increased dramatically.