Some of the challenges are tenant friendly laws and high costs of construction and maintenance.  

Go see the average cost of a lot for sale in HEB if you can find one.   

I am currently in debt a total of about $75,000 and they don't tell you that you should really have funds for the cost of the program and at LEAST 9-12 months because it could be that long for a deal to be closed.

The more you leave open on the front end, the more likely your contractor will increase costs throughout.  

I think yes, you can leverage your VA loan.But before you do that, you need to make sure you have money aside in case of unforeseen circumstances.ideally, if you buy a fixer-upper and can get 100% of the loan + renovations + Closing costs covered on the loan, then after renovation, you can refinance it to rent.

I know some hosts worry about the cost of design, but there are ways to make a home beautiful on a budget.

The downside to this strategy is that I would have to pay additional closing costs.

Once you find a house that you believe would be a good rental, meaning desirable to your target market of customers (people within a couple of mile radius of the place), and all of the costs of monthly ownership that you can accurately project fall below the rental amounts that you project that you can get from your target customers, then you have a possible business asset that you can use to produce income, and have renters pay down the mortgage, while hopefully it goes up in value at least with the rest of the economy. 

Aside from the cash-refinance cost itself)3) Does this mean the new mortgage (30-year conventional for the apartments) be based on the $1.8M with new interest rate (at the time), etc.?

What do you folks use as online method (i.e Zillow payments )for rent payment which is free for tenants and no cost to me also.