I was able to lock in private money to purchase the first of the two properties with plans of doing a BRRRR.

I spent close to six months looking at various vendors in the space, and below are some of the ones we ended up choosing (including one of our favorites, Hospitable).Each of the hours underneath the categories refer to what I estimate the monthly time-savings are by deploying the technology within the box for us.

You can also have a high-yield savings account elsewhere, but a local bank relationship will really help you as you begin to grow.

The Airbnb paid for almost all the expenses of owning the home and my "rent" was just putting $200-300 away each month in savings for maintenance and capex.

Figure that out and you'll have a roof over your head that pays for itself while you accelerate savings and repeat in 1-2 years.

FB is not my fav, they are neither professional nor private. 

Securing loans with a low credit score is possible through private or HM lenders.

As others have commented, this is a scenario where you will have most luck with a private individual lender or some other local financing - just too small for pretty much all the national platform hard money lenders

The main reason I'm asking this, is to understand how much cash I need to save up in reserves before pulling the trigger on a deal like this?

Private message me if you need someone local.