Learn how to short term trade just one thing like Gold GC, until it is easy for you to pay for gas and beer.

Best of luck, this area could be an investor's gold mine for buy and hold in my opinion! 

You want a 3 bedroom to rent out two of them and at the very least your own private bath and the guest bath for your other two roommates. 

We also use Evernote to save filed pictures for each property to reference to when guests or owners have questions. 

Mine can set door codes, message (or call) guests, schedule cleaners, adjust the thermostat, monitor my cameras, & call a plumber just as easily as a local PM can, for 1% of the costI wrote much more about leveraging offshore assistants in this post here.

I know it plays well into the Great American Story to go from Nothing to Something, but in reality we don't typically get any awards for repeating mistakes that could have easily been avoided by following the advice of people "wise in the ways of gold" in Richest Man in Babylon speak.

Some guests will be gracious and others will be jerks, don't take it personally. 

Google is now working to put a Nest Hub in every hotel room and extolling the contactless benefits of voice commands aided by onscreen visuals.The most basic use for hotel room Nest Hubs covers “common service requests from guests.”

Your requirements are the gold standard.Just to clarify by what I meant by change is that I have been hearing is that landlords/property managers are tightening  their requirements.

(The calculus also changes if you are filing with a tax status other than disregarded entity.