How can I work around the risk of the home not selling? 

Study prices in home improvement stores like Home Depot to get a good idea of what everything costs, and log it on a spreadsheet.

Was a bad night as I had worked 12 hours that day and driven home 2 1/2 hours prior to the guest trying to pull that trick.

There are many versions of a correct answer to this question. if you are new, it might be worth considering a basic single family home first and foremost.

Any pro tips you can share as far as vetting tenants or collecting rent? 

Just sayin.. any city of say 50k or less an hour or so out of any of the mid west cities will have all sorts of sub 100k homes and less crime for sure..

I guess I will try and talk with him when I move in but I’m confident you can’t even rent a studio apartment in this zip code (06790) for $7504) When I sit down with him upon closing I plan on asking him personally if there’s anything that should be brought to my attention that needs to be done that I may not have seen on the home inspection which I will absolutely repair.  

This amounts to lost opportunity because if you had purchased RE, at the closing it can start producing return. 5) ADUs detract from the existing structure whether this is privacy, a garage, or just yard space. 6) this is related to number 1, but there are many more buyers looking to purchase homes for their family than there are RE investors looking to purchase small unit count properties.

Rentals create cash flow, and that's what we want as real estate investors, but you need cash on hand for unforeseen circumstances.The AC needs to be replaced, that's $7K to $10K or more depending on the size of the house and if you have one rental, it will eat all your cash flow, same to replace a roof, etc, or if tenant trash the home, you need money to fix it again.To me personally a nice rental portfolio that is healthy consists about 10 units, so if you have an issue with a house the portfolio can cover the repairs and still healthy, but when starting you need to have cash on hand just in caseYes, there are multiple strategies you can use to hack your way to buy your first rental with minimum cash, but I would start wholesaling or fix and flip a few deals to create that cash as fast as possible

working with the investors that I do they find that the financing options with new construction are fare better that most resale homes.