If you are able to buy a single family home, you can rent by the room long-term, or if it has separate living space (basement, mother-in-law sweet, etc.) you can Air Bnb, and likely cover your mortgage and potentially make money while living there, especially in a hot market like Austin.

I did my own inspection, but found the air conditioning not working. 

I've built a nice Excel sheet to track customers - name, contact info, where from, reason for coming, platform used (AIR/VRBO/Private) and gross/net revenues for each.

Im in California and have been looking at Big bear lake, lake Arrowhead, and also Lake Havasu. what worries me is it seems like the market is flooded with air bnbs in those areas but maybe someone with experience in those areas could chime in. any other advice would be appreciated to!

I need at least 1 because there is an air conditioning unit in the window spot that is no longer needed.Is this something that can be DIY?

3 - to find out occupancy and pricing, would u recommend using air dna ?

During Covid, out of about 230 properties, five tenants moved out because they could not pay the rent.Five evictions in 15 years.The average annual maintenance cost is between $300 and $400, excluding the occasional water heater or air compressor.Below is a map showing where some of our client's properties are located and the green area is where we find the most conforming properties.

@Jack OrthmanIt’s common here in Coastal Orange County, CA due to the salt air requiring frequent painting and additional maintenance.

Then, you need to call in the appropriate vendor, repair person, or replace the appliance.For example, the policies/brochures that I have seen say (from memroy here) that for a forced hot air furnace they don't cover the burners, the fan / fan motor, the induction motor, the controller electronics, the ductwork, and the heat exchanger. 

As it stands, we have 4 houses we rent, and we live in a house that has an air bnb in the basement in the Washington DC area (rentals are all in Indiana).