I own one rental house in Cypress, but with the current market I have not been able to find another existing single family home to buy that looks like a good investment. 

The reality is section 8 tenants are dominated by single mothers with 1 to 5 kids at least that was my experience and when you have kids from babies to teens and everything in between your houses are going to take a beating..

Your realtor will be able to give you a much more detailed market specific answer but with house hacking and a VA loan it should be possible to get 0 out of pocket.

Purchase price: $232,500 Cash invested: $45,000 Beautiful fully renovated Shore Acres 2/1.This house really stands out on the block with the new bright paint scheme!

It's a very old house but newly renovated so there has been some maintenance issues because of the cold and poor insulation.

@Phillip Austin someone who obviously should not rent but buy themselves a brand new house. what was their previous place?  

For example of above, there was a person I know, they bought a house for a rental, the square footage was enough to make a 3rd bed out of a dining room, that would increase the month rent by $400.00 a month if they did that..

You can pick up houses cheap in the area but there is not a lot of appreciation.

@Jerry Velezstrongly recommend against doing this.start with a house hack instead.make it your mission to house hack.did i mention house hacking? 

I have found that Redfin actually has pretty good search parameters to where you can look for listings that have been sitting a while that fit your buy box, and you can even do keyword searches for things like "as is", "investor", "seller financing", "guest house", etc. depending on what you are looking for.