I'm currently in a rent to own house we are moving out of and will be renovating and renting.

And IMHO, the prices are dropping big time (on avg. 10K/month...houses that were above 300K a year ago are not selling at 250K now) and the available rentals saturation is worse than I seen during summer season (with rents dropping from 1$-1.08/sqft to 0.8$/sqft and very little contacts and applications...just go in Zillow and look how many rentals are on the market now in Kyle, New Braunfels or Converse). 

I actually recommend house hacking as a first step if possible. 

But I bought 3 more houses with the cash and now cash flowing $3000/month vs only $1200/month with that one paid off house.

I have five houses in Memphis area, and the biggest problem has been finding a good property management company. 

So about 8 houses per year will do ya....but don't forget your costs of doing business AKA overhead....Very good point!

You can't just walk into the tenant's house to do your laundry.

People house hacking have far different expectations than someone buying properties with cash. 

I have a contract on a house in Phoenix AZ with a value of $500,000 and a mortgage of $288,000 to be taken subto.

In 1-2 years you could save enough to purchase a home to house hack.