I have two roommates that rent out the extra rooms for $500 each.

With a detached garage, workshop space, basement or ADU ect - something I could turn into an extra room or at least into additional equity.

That might be your best bet if you don't want the extra costs and management that come with owning those homes yourself. 

The large lapse in time may make it hard to defend your claims, so take extra care.

Only extra thing is the acquisition charge the GP takes but that is because the GP fronts all the costs for due diligence, which is substantial.

We decided to turn the extra space in the house into the Laundry/Mud Room.  

I plan to re-finish the basement and attic to add an extra 1000 SF+ of living space.

We are renting the home out for $2230/mo.While I haven’t hit any home runs exactly, I’ve managed to acquire 3 good size single family homes, cash flowing an extra $1000/mo as well as letting the homes appreciate.

There is zero doubt that Zillow (and the Zillow family) brings in the largest number of leads but this year they started charging a lot (to us) to post rental ads so our management software stopped using it unless we paid extra.

If you want to cut them a break just take the deposit and don’t charge them the extra.