Also there is nothing preventing you from doing a little property rehab while you live there. adding carports, landscaping, storage units, driveways etc.. to boost your property value and gaining equity either to refinance or open a HELOC to fund your next investment. 

Nothing about anti-wholesaler energy is about preventing "the common man" from being financially free. 

Lower the rent.That’s a great idea, I will start asking to see what is preventing them from moving forward.

Until I wanted to make sure I took the measures to prevent our pipes from freezing/bursting.  

I would also like to borrow in the entity name to prevent me from having multiple mortgages on my personal credit, which I've been dealing with for years.

I did some research on the City of Monroe and was pleased to see that there are only 12 apartment complexes in the entire city, I knew that meant these apartments would always be in high demand and I knew that construction cost would prevent any new competition from entering the market.

"professionally done" improvements (which doesn't prevent one from hiring a bad worker..). 

You can also have them schedule/complete preventative maintenance asks such as smoke detector and A/C drain line cleanings.

However, I would like to prevent making some of my previous mistakes on my next purchase.

And Texas is a landlord friendly state, I just had an eviction suit on one of my units and the judge offered me to join an eviction prevention program, if tenant qualified I would get paid, I said yes.