My wife and I purchased a home at the very beginning of 2022 and "house-hacked."

Typically, furnished rentals are for shorter term stays, so the tenant is most likely going to be able to deal with whatever your style is.Should be able to command much higher rent depending on the area for a furnished rental - minimum of 50% more than LTR.One option could be to lease the house and sell / lease the furniture in a separate bill of sale / contract.

My problem was by that time so much was owed, it was more than the house was worth. 

This would be the safest money but probably the costliest.Don't build a house of cards, Tyler.

Alternative route I chose, I will leverage my duplex (purchased 4 years ago) equity through house hacking to have skin in the game on next flip.

You can pick up houses cheap in the area but there is not a lot of appreciation.

Quote from @Duane Williams: We’re a family-owned fix-and-flip company operating in San Antonio, TX, and Northern Virginia, managing everything in-house—from wholesale acquisitions to rehab & construction (with our own project managers and crews) to listing & selling through our licensed brokerage.

You can still buy houses in small farm towns in MN for $25k.

Showing houses 30 minutes at a time counts.

They specialized in concrete tilt up, but did a lot of time and materials work for a self made real estate tycoon who owned a lot of Federal Way.Along the way I got my CPA license and practiced in several differing sectors including doing some work with low income housing projects.As far as my start in RE, it was with buying my first personal SFR and later moving to a new residence.