One idea I am thinking about, just to get my foot in the door, would be to buy a house with an FHA loan, set it as my place of residence, get some roommates, and have them live there, while I travel for work.

My guess is you would then split the proceeds from down payment with the foot on the ground representitive? 

Could you give me a quick 40,000 foot view of how you invest in rental properties?

They take broad metrics like price per square foot or acreage to extrapolate.

Weird size (~2' H x 4' W) and large floor to ceiling windows (two 3 foot tall windows on top of each other) with sliding glass door on the whole 25' wall to backyard Below are the projects I would like to get done in the current order I plan to do them. 

Missing one piece of siding that is maybe a foot long and easy to repair.

I Set my foot down on several occasions and it doesn't seem to get anywhere.

My guess is that in NYC there are some 6 foot 5 bouncers who are out of work and would be happy for a cash side job right about now. 

To estimate the rehab cost, multiply the square footage of the property by the rehab cost per square foot.

Not all small/local banks will have robust online or app interface, so depending on how much you want to do your banking online, that would be something to consider.I read a pretty cool book called Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, one thing he points out is to possibly find multiple banks to accomplish the methods in the book.