Maybe an investor is flipping a lot of properties and you could offer to pick up and deliver materials to his crews, clean the work sites every night, bring his crew lunch, or whatever.Find a way to make yourself useful to them, and they will reciprocate.

It's going to be tough to get much better than that right now. 

@Jonathan B.Assuming you pass the "material participation" test for 2023 and did not use the property yourself (or used very little), you should be able to treat it as an STR for 2023, including bonus depreciation.  

That is true with almost any material item.

ya this is a tough one..

The CRE market is tough right now. 

Not a tough process (unless you stink at your job as a property manager, right?)

With California’s tough landlord laws, I can see why you’re looking for more landlord-friendly areas.

How about a sales contract with contingencies but with a limit where the buyer can only terminate the contract if their find material defects exceeding a certain dollar amount.

The place where you can add value with no money is a situation like: you find project A, it is a 120k purchase and it should need 80k rehab but you can get rehab done for 65k cause you can do some of the work and you know how to save on materials and you can manage the rehab.