The houses are getting scooped up regularly and being flipped by out of town investors and a lot by the hasidim

Think Multifamily sponsors regular meetups in the Dallas Fort Worth area. 

If it were me, I would be calling all the hard money in the area or lenders that regularly work with investors, they will have hard money. 

@David NaccoIn order to take the home office deduction, you must use the room/building/clearly divisible structure exclusively and regularly as your home office, and it must be your principal place of business.If you're building a separate structure you generally would not "write off" the construction costs in year 1, rather you would capitalize and depreciate the structure over 39 years. 

Depending on what you mean by "real estate CRM" I'll suggest a few:Real estate agent work/networking/regular communication with sphere - Followup BossProductivity, task and process management, and versatility - Monday.comOld school, get it done in whatever way you want - Microsoft Excel

If you see their add on television or hear it on the radio, they probably don't do what you need on a regular basis.  

he ended up paying just the regular Nov rent on Nov 4th. 

Do you perform regular property inspections?

As a regular buyer, I'd be worrying about matching the floors, or needing to re-do the entire thing ($$$).   

My opinion is that if you were to do some part time job for that 8 to 10 hours, or take on more clients in your regular business and save a couple grand more to buy a rental that cash flows well, you'll be able to build the wealth you want, albeit probably much slower.Also, one of the head honchos here at Bigger Pockets has a book called "How to Invest in Real Estate with Low and No Money Down" which gives a ton of ideas on what you could do.