I am retired and working on career #2 and 2 of 3 of our kids have left for college - our oldest is headed to UConn for her PhD (6 years) and instead of paying to rent, our thoughts are to do a version of a house hack with buying a house/condo and renting out one to two rooms to offset the costs of her rent.

They had signed the lease, but I had held off signing until they paid the upfront move-in costs. 

I can understand that low cost housing will appeal appeal to a different tenant profile, but if the product itself is very good won't it also attract the kind of tenant you want more readily?!?

We pay $2K month credit card debt (used to set-up the STR’s) get $5K from Social Security, leaving $3K to live on.

There are also several build-to-rent projects going on with builder financing deals snd some even offering perks like property management (even free for a period) so maintenance costs can be kept lower in the beginning years. 

I am here to answer your questions, so don't hesitate and set up a time to chat with the link below if you're interested in more insights as I am a loan officer. https://calendly.com/tycoutts

Low acquisition price, medium investment cost.

So you need to remember that there are about 4- 6 big box lenders that fund most of the Hard Money loans and then you have thousands of brokers selling their products and lots of times someone thinks they are dealing with a lender but they are not, they are dealing with a broker who has a lending sounding name and this broker is set up with an account at a few different lenders. 

The total cost of project is more than we can qualify for based on personal income, although our W2 income and credit score all work in our favor.

Not only that but you are going to carry a Heloc in a 2nd lien position and you will not be able to pull out more cash unless you do a cash out refinance to pay off the previous Heloc and take out more cash.85% of the home owners who take out a Heloc refinance in 3-5 years so it makes more sense to simply do a COR and avoid the future closing costs.