Or you could use non-QM loans.

@Lucas Carl, When you talk about your cabin with a purchase price of $500k, I'm assuming a 25% down payment + any costs to furnish/fix/renovate as the initial cash outlay (for example $150k total). 

This increased my down-payment amount and also axed some of the stuff I was hoping to save on but in the end it still worked out.

I have thought about doing a HELOC but I feel like I am just creating another payment at a higher interest rate.

We have new builds going up by the hundreds and I recently met with some of the model agents and they are offering big discounts, buy downs, lower down payments, higher end units for the lower prices, incentives to selling agents, etc. 

Your original loan amount would be $96,000. so you would have around $42,000 of the original $70,000 in down payments.

As a recent college graduate, I'm going to assume that you're not able to throw money around and put massive down payments on homes. 

Still a challenge to cash flow with a typical down payment, but they can be found with the right deal.

In these "quantity" areas, you'll have a very hard time finding a buyer who has a down payment and can qualify for a loan .This is an article Jack Miller wrote about the topic.Making money from the earnings of poor people is like getting orange juice from an orange tree without any oranges on it.

There are plenty of real estate and non-real estate opportunties.