Stratford, Bridgeport, West Haven, and New Haven are reasonably close and have some attractive prices

Given the choice between the two, I find that higher quality tenants are more attracted to laminate than to carpet.

While you can get stiffed there are a number of ways of mitigating that.1) You have done this and it is have higher rent which attracts a better class of tenant. 2) Screen well and get quality people3) Use a debiting service to collect rent.

Thanks, @Neal Collins, you're absolutely right: I'll need to do a lot of homework on the mortgages, taxes, potential fees etc. for any given property.Another big reason I'm doing this is that there are a lot of attractive reasons to go from having an external office for my business (which is currently the case) to having an in-home office that would be tax deductible and essentially give me a discount on my house payment.However, another consideration that I must be careful of is that with seller-financing, a seller can sell the house as-is with possibly a huge number of repairs/some deeply fundamental repair needed.

An extra $400 a month is nothing to scoff at.Also with a multi, if one of your tenants move out, you've only lost half of your income, as opposed to all of it.That being said, a SFH seems like it would potentially attract a little higher quality tenants.  

Otherwise you face a stronger possibility of not receiving payment, given the tenants those properties attract (not sure what you're about to close on).There are several groups you can go to that provide housing/utilities assistance besides Richmond Redevelopment who is associated with the GoSection8 website.  

Louisiana is rich in natural resources, Baton Rouge is the state capital and home of LSU, New Orleans is a huge tourist/convention city, and the people of Louisiana for the most part are tough and truly love their state! 

I think of providing washers and dryers as an amenity to attract more and better applicants.

The attractive part of mobile home parks is the high cash flow, but if sponsor's start to split that with investors, then their attractiveness starts to diminish. 

If you're willing to look a little bit further out, like closer to Newark, there are probably more attractive deals for doing that, and you could still hypothetically be on an NJ transit line to Manhattan and/or the JC area, or you could pretty easily drive.What sort of work are you looking to do?