I attend multiple meetups from Santa Barbara to Thousand Oaks and meet with folks doing all sorts of strategies - House Hack, STR, LTR, Infill Development, Flips etc. 

Once you have the money for the deal sorted then you can start underwriting properties and submitting offers.

Go to zillow and sort by lowest prices in your market.

Some markets that have distress and motivated sellers will benefit even more, but with higher rates, more fear, less buyers, if you have a mom and pop seller who is motivated, great time for the strategy.There are some great books on the subject.

So, that got them motivated quick, like literally overnight! 

The biggest advice to keep the contractor motivated is to give them a 10% bonus if they finish before schedule and deduct 5% if they run over finish date.

(Maybe you could make some sort a pre-arrangement with them - or work with an angel investor that could front the money and then you reimburse them with a hard money loan or something like that).  

Uses that also target the business incubator residents/visitors and remote workers might work, e.g. many years ago I'd thought about doing a sort of subscription-based co-working space - something of that sort may do well initially, but may be much more successful in about 5 years as the area continues to redevelop.Current resident population within 1/2-mile is lower-income.

I'm trying to figure out if I can get some sort of rider from the company to include them but otherwise it leaves me very vulnerable if someone brings in an ESA. 

Rents are pretty high in Baltimore ($1500- $1700 for this sort of home).