As someone else mentioned, make sure you don’t go overboard with the updates.

I'll look up the group you mentioned.

that is accurate.i skimmed the responses and didn't see anyone mention house hacking. 

You mentioned "The only problem is that these are 6 month lends, I'm 1.5 months into this, so any work that I do now will not reap any kind of benefits until 6 months from now."

My plan is to use a low down payment conventional loan, and with the factors you mentioned, it’ll likely be tough to find a property that breaks even.

You mentioned Crowd Street already, and that could be a good place to start looking and learning.

I know you mentioned other units are listed comparably but asking price is not the same as rented price.

Payments stay lower, cashflow better and it'll boost your balance sheet not to mention lower risk when things go awry. 

It is pushed over and over and over, especially on social channels and from service providers, and often interchanged with other terms and defined differently constantly, but mentioned again and again. 

After picking a handful of areas of interest, it took me about 6 months to work on the deals that met the numbers I mentioned before.Now its time to scale!