I have enough furniture in storage to furnish this house, so we will rent individual rooms until spring, then we will get the entire house re-rented for May.You can always pick-up individuals during the school year ... those who land at university as a foreign student or late admission are around for another 2-3 weeks.  

Also anyone who can be paid per our for small jobs like ikea furniture installation, demolishing or debris removal.

We took the small profit to buy furniture.

Then net out the utilities, cable, internet, vacancy, furniture cost, etc..

Out here in the flatlands, folks have a lot of brown/natural wood/beige furniture & linens, so gray is a little too trendy for some properties.

When we arrived we peaked in the windows and you could see a bunch of ratty looking furniture (odd for staging I thought).

it seems as if option #1 allows you to quickly scale with less money (basically furniture and a security deposit) but has the downside of lower margins since you're not building equity.I've also thought of other ideas such as buying a few properties under a llc with several other investors, where the total cash per person would be the same as if you bought 1 property by yourself but it's diversified across different markets and reduced risk.

If you're in a very competitive market you may want to get the house staged (filled with furniture) for marketing purposes.If you must list it in such a way as to disclose the address (for example you list it with an agent as a rental) please spend the extra $15-20 bucks to install a simplisafe alarm system: this is an inexpensive alarm system that works over 3G cellular networks.

I find some of the furniture at yard sales and online and other available resources for good deals.

Do a sample calculation (with taxes, some amount of vacancy, cleaning, furniture, etc) and determine what nightly/monthly rate you would need to make a profit.