Where there is room to negotiate is in escrow fee's and all the junk fee's they try to through in. you can push back on some of those occasionally.  

The house hack is a perfect way to get started, it affords you a home base at a minimal cost.You could even consider doing a short term rental occasionally in the unit you live in if you set it up correctly for a little added income on top of the permanently rented units.Happy to walk you through the steps of the process in the Phoenix market.

Then you will need to spend at least a few hundred - let's call it $500 - per year maintaining what you've done - pulling weeds, putting in mulch, replacing the occasional dead plant, etc.

Of course you can always do an occasional trip to the property to do updates and maintenance. 

Occasionally asset managers will make deal specific terms like non-refundable deposits. 

Most of the time they are wrong and occasionally they are right.

Considering becoming a franchisee to be a better REI and leverage my current skills as a workplace designer who occasionally does residential. 

My advice is that if you are the one screening the tenant and don't mind to come and change the occasional lightbulb, then section 8 could work for you.

We also may be getting into a distinction between someone who occasionally may assign, for a fee, a property he has under contract, and someone in the BUSINESS of getting properties under contract and trying to assign those contracts for a fee and the not closing on the contracts he’s unable to profitably assign.  

I didn't have a job and just did occasional consulting and traveled the world for fun.