But meantime I also want to rent easily.

I invest primarily on the eastern shore and expanding to the Annapolis area.

And despite those many 5 stars (which could be faked pretty easily), there are quite a few 1 star reviews that all say the same thing.

I am in Houston area but am also interested in expanding into other cities such as Austin and Dallas.

Yes we have expanded outside of Louisville.

That, in itself, may be making you ineligible to find the work that is easily available to you. 

Some guy charging way too much to "teach" you something you could easily learn on your own for free. 

Now that we've finally finished our casita in North Baja Mexico we're considering expanding our portfolio somewhere warmer in the coming months or years.. 

It can come at the very end so that you're not wasting your time (and theirs), but the kind of long term damage that a bad tenant will cause to a property is not something that they can quickly and easily hide so you want to get eyes on how they are currently living.The age of the house has nothing to do with section 8.

We demolished our garage, expanded the footprint, and have an addition + garage on the lower level and then the 2/1 ADU as the top level.