I own several in Alabama, including one in Bham.

A good sign of an agent is how much business they are doing on the purchase and sale side.

I do not worry much about "hurried or sloppy work" because it is also in my contract that all work must pass inspection, which may include the city / county (for permitted projects), lender and myself.

I have an STR in Niagara Falls and it does pretty well based on the purchase price. 

Just keep in mind that using that emergency fund to buy your next property and having tapped a HELOC already may leave you in a bad spot if you run into a similar problem again.Also, I’m not 100% sure, but I have heard that personal loans don’t your credit more so than other types of debt so be sure you look into that if you go the personal loans route and then planned to finance your next purchase soon after.

In the Bigger Pockets free book, "Real Estate Rewind", as one of the 11 co-authors I wrote about one such Tax Sale purchase and made money but not enough money to warrant the risk involved.

Now we are mostly scaling our business with larger communities but I've used many different creative finance strategies including seller finance, private lending, hard-money, collateral from other properties, and lease-options. 

I would consider getting 1-2 deals on market before you purchase off-market.

Alternatively, if you’re using QuickBooks Online with a plan that includes the "Payments" feature, you can collect rent directly through QuickBooks while staying on top of your bookkeeping

Some of those included those previously mentioned windows.