Tips for the buyer:Be prepared to be flexible and wait.

I even bought 3 properties in one day using the HELOC to fund the down payment on each of those purchases. 

its genius really.. most bird dogs work for locals on a performance basis and don't have to pay the investor to bring them deals.. 

With no renovations required, we leveraged market demand to quickly resell the property the same day for $85,000.

You also have to ask about delivery costs and more.LABORLabor charges are trickier to understand, but Google AI to the rescue! 

So if you discount a small amount to get rolling, that is something that can work, but don't want to stay low for long.You will start to get the dregs staying at your place and they can do some real damage to the place.

I would still prefer residential these days though. 

REPS does not relate to STR's.For short-term rentals (STRs) with an average rental period of seven days or less, you don’t need REP status to offset losses against other income.

Quote from @Timothy Rei: The absolute best way to solve this problem would be to offer the teacher $30~$60 to cover the cost of keeping the heater on during days when the room temperature fall below an agreed upon threshold. 

In the end we had to pay to turn the space back in to a white box/shell and closed with basically zero physical assets.