Find Brandon's videos on YouTube for the "four square" method of analyzing homes and practice.

Even though I had a full size W/D on site, I still used this method.....

Options ive looked at are the Burrrr method, house hacking with fha living in the property for a year doing small upgrades and forcing appreciation refinance then rent and repeat that every year until we reach our goal.

And given that, in a major city, there are hundreds of houses put on the market weekly, you need a method to efficiently screen properties to make sure they won't bleed money before you spend time analyzing, touring them ect. 

Post on Craigslist seems like another 'guru' but I cannot put my finger on it, he seems to be following Cherif method, not sure what to make of it.

This is public info and usually it will change based on seller being there a long time or something like an elderly tax rate.What are insurance costs like (we've got a lot of local variability around fire insurance for ex.)?

And there is definitely ways to structure a sub to deal to protect yourself a little better as a buyer but the problem is and will always be that the lender isnt in the loop with this and can call the loan at any point which puts a lot of risk on the sellers willing to do this method and the buyers who are investing money into these deals.

there are of course more creative strategies to reduce that up front outlay, or recoup your capital, like, say, the BRRRR method. but they are time and energy intensive and certainly not hands-off. 

So I'm strongly considering adding a handful of these to my buy & hold portfolio.I understand that there's no "risk-free" method to acquiring these properties subto, but have any of you had success over the long-term acquiring properties with VA loans attached?

You can take a deep look at the deals and get an idea of the kind of variety you'll see and come up with your own due diligence method (that meets your unique situation).