Initially, covering your mortgage is a reasonable goal.

The outskirts of Atlanta covers 20 counties and millions of people. 

If the seller offers less than 2.5%, though, the buyer would need to cover the gap.

Other than that, be sure each quote covers what you need for a multi-unit, like liability for tenants and coverage for rental income loss.

But I'm hopeful that it's one leg of the stool for me that kicks in some business, and while it's not great math, I'm glad that I have already had the cost covered by transactions from leads.

To cover the down payment and closing costs, I took a 401k loan, which left me more capital for the renovation work.

You may have it priced too high, bad pictures, etc.I recommend you include some of your key qualification criteria in the advertisement.

I’ll have enough capital to cover 2 down payments 1: first property Under 5% because I’m house hacking. 2: And 20% for the remaining 8 properties.

My thoughts on this would be - when you're taking out all money that you have invested into a property AND the property has enough equity that any loan fees can also be covered through the refinance AND the property still cash flows, you're getting an investment with no cash of your own.  

I personally like long term rentals, but it sounds like the numbers don't make sense and if you cant afford to or can't justify covering that much negative cash flow then another strategy is renting by the room, that works well if you have or can convert to at least 4 or 5 bedrooms.