Take advantage of owner occupancy financing and find something you can house hack.Potentially consider option #3:  Lower your budget and look at bit further to the "fringe" neighborhoods of the city to find a more affordable single family home with an in-law living arrangement. 

I'm a fresh landlord and every time I come across home warranty promotion I wonder if it's better to spend that ~$50 for a peace of mind and also I can take that out of my capex/maintenance budget?

My budget is $150,000 or less.  

So keep on trucking forward!

Whats your budget?  

Have contingency plans for when budgets grow.

I don't see a budget for a property manager. 

I knew my budget was going to be low because we aren't paid very much in the military so I decided that living in a fixer-upper was going to be my best bet.

I found a few ways to upgrade the look and feel of this place on basically a shoe string budget when I was just getting started.

(Budget is $10-20k over the next year or two).