Hard Money loan How did you add value to the deal?

Most lenders will use the lower of actual rents vs market rents regardless of section 8/non section 8.

We have lived in our other two deals, made money on both, but I have no idea how to do another deal safely without living in it.

and that was owner occ.. todays rates are pretty normal actually. what you can do if you want though is find a really good HML and let them place a loan for you making 10 to 12% while your wait for things to change to a situation that you feel you want to move forward be more net return than buying a rental thats for sure. of course no tax bene's but there really is not that much tax benefit on one rental.. so just some alternatives. 

@Ella Marie the Pro's are you can build long term wealth, the Cons are you can lose money if you cannot properly quantify risk.

If not and you wrote them the check, then most likely the $ is gone and suing for that money will cost you more than $1000 unfortunately.So cancel the agreement and request the funds

I would actually recommend using the agent finder for the market your looking to get started in to find you an agent that specializes in out-of-state investors in your chosen market.

You don't need to actually rent to purchase a renters policy.

find a strategy that is repeatable and duplicatable and gets your money back.

The only way I can access is money is through my primary residence and doing a HELOC.