From a business perspective only the choice would be stay right where you are.But you are at a time where a vacation rental you can use yourself is attractive. 

So, talk to investors and ATTORNEYS in your state and find out if hitting home owners in pre-foreclosure is legal and won't bite you later on.The other thing to be on watchout is if there are liens and encumbrances that will get you stuck , because investors will do their own title search and find out the price you assign the house to them is just a part of a larger bill they have to pay to own it. 

So, if the top dollar people are getting for a comparable rental is $1350 and the average is $1200, coming in at $1100 could attract not only LESS qualified tenants but also a LARGER number of QUALIFIED tenants.

Yeah I guess I don't have much choice.

I wonder what area would be a good choice.

There are lots of choices for out of state area and there will be many responses with midwest. 

We build single family too and larger assets we are in entitlements but we have a standard product for the triplex. we build 668 sq ft. our goal was the smallest two bed possible to create maximum rents per sq ft and max equity and lowest build cost.

What helped me build confidence were the following:-Listening to as many podcasts including BP as possible-Utilizing the miracle morning routine daily-Read as many real estate investing books that I could get my hands on-Attending as many local real estate meetups as possible-Finding a mentor that was doing what I wanted to do at a larger scale and providing him immense value so he would take me under his wing-Starting my own local real estate meetup-Walk as many properties as possible and make offers.

You have choices though… from being the butthole landlord who tolerates no being behind… files eviction at the first drop of the hat, to the softy that gets exploited.  

You can change the 17 days to a larger number but it weakens your offer.