We go to straight to sellers with our marketing the prices our better and the ones that meet our criteria we keep for cash flow and the ones that don’t we wholesale.

The city itself is established, older neighborhoods, better city amenities (museums, arts/music etc), more pro sports, more hills, bigger river, has a streetcar, arguably better nightlife overall.

I have a pretty large emergency fund in place for those properties, but I wonder if that capital could be better employed elsewhere (potentially acquire another property).  

2.Are there strategies to reduce the required down payment or secure better mortgage terms?

The intent of getting a sales agent license is to educate myself in Real Estate and create some additional income.If your relationship is such that you need to hide your license, you’d be better off with a different working relationship.  

I've been doing some studying on short sales but still working to understand it better.

Are there better markets or hybrid approaches I should consider (e.g., smaller multifamily properties that accept Section 8 tenants)?

Just focusing on the passive income you want to achieve will leave you chasing cash flow which will have you buying properties in worse areas with harder tenancies that seem to cash flow better, but will have large cap ex.Any time someone asks a question about where to invest and it can be anywhere, they aren't ready to invest and are opening themselves up to every pitch in the world on an area.

@Bruce Bennett Google Reviews are great and Bigger Pockets reviews are even better!

Because personal growth and financial stability sounded like a better combo than Netflix and takeout.