Due to the extreme volatility of crypto and potentially high transaction costs, you need to be real careful with harvesting crypto losses.Pick tax-efficient investments.

In order to make your numbers work in today's market you have to buy extremely cheap...

This is extremely helpful!

Rental property is extremely tax advantaged based on the current tax code.

I am extremely outpriced in my market, and I am a first time home buyer.

And, even then, hitting your rate target would still be extremely challenging unless you were paying points up front, in which case it would probably make more sense to just try to put in a bigger down payment (or pay down the balance if refi) instead and get better terms naturally offered at the lower LTV.

The properties I am seeing in this situation in Toledo have been sold to the 1031 exchange buyers at extreme prices.

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.

I think one of them offers a public API.Once you get your license, you can join the CAR Chicago Association of Realtors and I have found them to be extremely helpful with questions like this. 

On other extreme let's look at that, a "good" STR business.