Feel free to reach out if you ever want to chat or bounce ideas around.

We have also toyed w/the idea of buying/moving into fixeriuppers and selling every 2 years. 

Average rental rates, vacancies, competition, growth, appreciation, etc..Ive heard of scrolling through Zillow and collecting information by looking at properties for sale/rent but was wondering if there is a site where all of this information is easily accessible or any ideas for better ways to go about it.Thanks in advance!

Am wanting to add a STR to my portfolio and thought having one near where I live was a better idea than investing out of state.

Let me know if you need more ideas, I'd be happy to connect! 

To give you an idea of how we approach it, we assume the worst-case scenario right from the start is 9-12 months of no rent, $5,000 in legal fees, and an additional $5,000 in expenses to deal with moving their stuff, putting it in storage, and dealing with health code violations or NOV's from the city during the process. 

Check out Furnished Finder, Airbnb and VRBO (30+ day stays) to get a good idea of what else is out there in the area of El Paso you are looking in.

We are interested in using the equity for a real estate investment, and are looking for ideas, suggestions, or investors in similar situations.

Any ideas on how to handle this?     

I agree with the others here that say you need to have some skin in the game, if you are going to live there yourself, get an FHA loan rather than owner financing, you can get a 3.5% down loan, personally I do not love these as they require  PMI which is an additional expense, and you also need  bring additional funds for closing at least for taxes, title, attorney and transfer fees . borrowing from anyone else for the down payment, to include a personal loan from the bank is not a good idea, those again will be higher int. rate.