I'm lucky and have an amazing intelligent friend who works for me in her downtime. 

Marketing - Is your property manager pre-marketing the unit so there is minimal downtime between tenants?

Lucky for me, my job has a lot of down time.

I could market during the lease back period and was able to have a short downtime between owning and renting, having lined up repair work etc. 

Prepare for downtime for the make-ready between tenants.

You can go to the auction and basically interview them (preferably before the auction or while they have downtime) about the kind of properties they are looking for (e.g. price range, condition, location etc.).

Solar panels installed in the good times allows one to save $150-$300 a month in the down times.3.

As Matt points out don't worry about cash flow as long as you have deep pockets to carry your investments for extended down times.

Savings, as @Corby Goade pointed out is always a good thing to have.Perhaps you could also use this period of 'down time' to learn about alternative ways to finance, and keep looking at properties diligently--when you find a deal, you can always partner up or sell the contract or lease/option or so many other effective means of increasing your portfolio without overburdening yourself in case of a market hiccup.Hope this helps, and keep moving forward.

I am currently playing professional hockey and have a lot of down time that I’m using to learn about real estate.