Being kind and listening to people are two skills/actions that too many people ignore. 

You can go tona hard money lender or depending on what skills you have, team up with another investor that has the cash and you do the work.

In all of my experience, it take time and skill to manage employees/contractors/professional.

Sounds like you want a nicer place to live in and that you have the skill and ability to make that happen.

None of the skills involved with being good with one of those translates to the other.  

Volunteer at Habitat for Humanity to learn basic construction/improvement skills. 

If the buyer is uncomfortable or unwilling to provide proof of funds to you that may be a red flag; see if they would be willing to provide it to their attorney who can verify, and then make sure the contract protects you. 

I also have a 24k student loan, so I have been trying to think other real estate options to gain capital, flipping sounds like a good approach but I don't have any the skills do do it myself at the moment. 

If I had 1M liquid I must have some very high level skills already that I use to make a lot of money, and my time would be more well spent doing that then learning a completely new skill set that would be required to be an successful SFH investor

I have experience in building my own WordPress websites and have some skills in SEO ( I have been able to get my websites ranked #1 for their keywords).