If it is a high end housing product you may have to use a designer because they have access to some material/finish suppliers that are otherwise unavailable but that tends to only be for the highest end housing deliveries.

I have investor friends in LA area offering temporary free housing.

You can make house hacking work anywhere, really.

I suspect it's due to the change in the housing market and economy.  

I a new investor  who self-manages my property and need some advice.Currently, when there are plumbing issues, I have a plumbing company come to the house and I have to meet them there.

If I were you I would look into the possibility of starting off with a house hack.

It's like the 70% rule, you can use it to narrow down 100 deals to 30 deals to dive deeper, but you need to know estimates per house..

That way, you keep more in reserves and have more to put towards your next house hack.

I also pay my mortgage for the house I live in.

We plan to stay in this house for more than 5 years unless another great opportunity arises, but maybe it is best to allocate a bigger portion of savings to our real estate investment savings account than our home improvement savings account for the first few years.