That is not an accurate picture you are painting here.All this is just drama overspill from a different post on a different forum:https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/93/topics/1216921-advic...A college student asked for advice in the wholesaling forum, about trying to wholesale in NYC.His "Constructive Criticism" was:This is not "constructive criticism", this is projecting your own limitations onto others.

i applied for a great card offer last year, got rejected, and was actually able to connect to a nice person who helped me to (accurately) revised my application and get approved.

(doubt this is accurate)Regardless0.02% of 500,000,000 = 100,000 people are successfulSo you see ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND success stories, people holding up checks, bragging about how many Lambos they buy... but what you will never see are the rest of the 499,900,000 people quietly crying in the fetal position on the floor that lost a fortune trying those tactics.You don't hear from them, you don't see them and you only see extremely incomplete data.Again,I would stop telling others it is a numbers game.

I have to ask where you got some of the info in your post because to be fair and accurate if its from a media outlet.  

Is this accurate @Dave Foster?

So, real estate agents may do it part-time, but rarely do they do it well.Recommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

This will make it something like this (the dimensions are not accurate, just for representation) plus there's going to be the 3rd bedrooms in the basement, making it 3B2B. 

There are others that continue to gamble with floating rate debt.  

(Some of us have more than one...)So here you are.Your first step should be to get the facts and then reassess your options.You'll need realistic and accurate estimates of your ARV, your remaining repair expense, market rent, and total projected holding costs.If you run your numbers and you can still make this work as a rental, then great!

(Probably not technically accurate).