That said, it can be done and done successfully if you plan in advance, build your team (contractors, subs, back ups, lenders, credit with suppliers, escrow/title, real estate attorney, mentor, etc.) get educated on finding (marketing) for deals, rehab costs, locations, market data (like crime rates, school ratings, population growth, job growth, etc), specific market insights like what is most popular and sells for the most in your area, etc

Your options in the Iowa Quad Cities are going to be Davenport, Bettendorf, and our surrounding mostly newer suburbs, which tend to be more expensive and less likely to cash flow.

It’s great that you’ve already started practicing with NOI and cap rates for evaluating properties, but you're right that smaller properties, like quadplexes or less, are often valued differently.For residential properties with four units or fewer, the market tends to focus more on comparable sales in the area rather than purely relying on income calculations like cap rate.

Personally, I tend to be more “speculative” in my real estate investments.  

Also, I don't tend to buy linearly. 

Self storage can be great, but super easy to replicate down the street, so tends to get overbuilt.How about looking for an existing rv park?

As it has been said, I would tend to lean towards continuing to rent.

Once we got the home reclassified at the 4% rate, the taxes dropped to under $600 with the same assessed value of the home.In my experience, rental property tends to be taxed at an actual rate of 6% while owner-occupied property has an actual rate between 0.5 and 0.7%.  

Because of that reason, they tend to be the most competitive with the rates as nothing undisclosed to the borrower will ever go to their compensation.

AirDNA is a great tool, but I tend to find it slightly underwhelming, like @Wayde Hall mentioned for unique properties.