I'm underwater with my mortgages and credit cards and bills.

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Risking your house on these kind of moves can become a literal house of cards as you scale.

A good example to reduce your potential costs without raising rents is to have the tenant agree to handle all repairs under a certain amount.

Typically  issues are raised when the exterior is not kept up with / parking on grass / garbage in neighborhoods where everyone takes pretty good care of their homes.If you keep it clean and run a tight ship, you should be okay most of the time.

If you're going to do that and want cash flow, you'll very likely need to at least make some cosmetic improvements to the units to raise the rents and then manage efficiently.

so it turned into an accidental flip.i have one i did in 2021-2022 that broke even when i finished, but now cash flows well because i've been able to raise the rent a few times.happy to help further

You will learn from the first time you purchase a property, market a property, vet tenants, raise rents, handle maintenance requests, etc... 

That raises the cost esp in a small SF model....

sometimes to reduce borrowing costs, I'll use a hard money loan solely for the purchase, and then pay for the rehab in cash or use a 0% credit card (I don't recommend that for new investors!)