I brought my friend along and he devised a few strategies to employ with the property.

As a self-employed 1099 individual, your best route is most likely DSCR.

Sometimes large employers will rent furnished apartments for their employees coming to town on a regular basis.Also, if you believe strongly in the appreciation of the house, how bad would the negative cash flow be if you did long term rental? 

Actually more becuase now you are self-employed and have all of those pesky overhead costs. 

Know the strategy that you will employ and the numbers it takes to make a worthwhile return.  

Clean, friendly, activity rich and lots of employment driving growth as far as I found. 

Generally your hours working at BP as a W-2 employee would not be part of RE professional hours unfortunately.For those who are RE professionals, gain on sale of rental real estate is still capital gains and still avoids self employment taxes just the same for those tho are not REPS so there is no downside to being a REP in the example you provided Scott. 

Are employers moving in, is the population growing, is the average household income high, does it have good market fundamentals?

Hello Ashish, as H-1B visa status doesn't permit in active jobs other than their employer. .

Look for population growth and variety in the number of employers in the area.