No college degree, and I can barely tie my own shoes.Your success is entirely dependent on you and you alone.  

That is, we were ok putting $40k down and barely cash-flowing because that suited our needs for property #1 but if we put $40k down now, it will need to bring us significantly more cash flow than break even (probably like $400-$500/month or more).Again, we were very conservative out the gate and are still very much rookies so our strategy will not be aligned with many others on this board or even yourself but decide what you can live with and what's important to you.

Although certainly the larder is never completely bare.  

If it takes 2 separate ACH transactions to get the funds from the renter's bank to the landlord's bank, 4 days would be the bare minimum.

Barely time to go to the restroom.  

Our first application came in for our rental, but after taxes their total income is barely 2x the rent, where we require 3x rent.

Out of 3 tenants, I found 2 of them on CraigsList and sent them to the property manager (who barely responded to them) and the 3rd time, I had an interested party too but the property manager actually found someone else at the same time.

Also, tenants tend to get better appliances, whereas landlords put the bare minimum/basic.

The absolute bare minimum a lender should do is communicate with their agent partners and close loans. 

The risk that you take with these barely cashing properties is that do you have sufficient sources of funds to carry the property if it goes negative cash flow due to loss in tenants, large capital expenditures, or both?