You can get a very high interest rate by doing private lending in the US and you probably have no shortage of demand for that.

Yes, the effects will be major and global (beyond what we are seeing with supply shortages as a result of COVID) but we haven't seen one yet...

And the affordable housing shortage is the only undeniable market trend that we all seem to agree on. 

Great economic metrics with consistent population growth for the past 100 years, a large diversification of employers and lastly a local government who doesn't like development so housing is continuing to become a shortage.

It seems reasonable to me for someone to start under the wings of an investor and trade time for developing some skills to build on. 

Or, perhaps you could start a consulting company with whatever skills you have expertise in.

A fire extinguisher is under 20 bucks, I might bring that as an offering to the table, but I wouldn't let them paint - painting cabinets requires some skill and patience - what if they do it very badly you may end up spending a lot of time reversing the job, or buying new hardware....worst case new cabinets. or they've spilled paint on the floors too...

Lots of available units, with the property values lower now, & no shortage of tenants.

You shouldn't be using Cost/Sqft as an evaluation tool in the first place.MLS data is KNOWN to be inaccurate; the selling agent enters it all as 'best he/she can from the information available".Sincerely hope you have better evaluation skills than that shown here.

And once you master these skills (like I did), guess what.