I am 59 years old now and inhale been in construction since I was 17.  

In a nutshell, how difficult is it to change course?

And i have had difficulties with Ocwen and i'm going to use your strategy on Ocwen.

So, easier to get in, but harder to stay in over the long term and only way to make big profit is to scale way up and rotate your inventory before CapEx on a property eats your lunch ... so, depends on if you want your difficulties on the front end or back end.

A $5,000 house is going to need a lot off work.The wolf investor expects to have difficulty finding a good contractor, knows it will cost more than budgeted and will take longer so they plan accordingly.

I generally think that owning real estate in multiple out of state areas creates both risk and operational difficulties. 

One of the problems that landlords may have renting to felons (and perhaps this is more of a "screen out" factor than a "problem") is that someone with a felon background may have difficulty finding employment that pays enough to meet income requirements for the rental. 

See rule 1  When Zillow, Opendoor , MF syndicators and Homebuilders are having difficulty making money in the current business climate, why do you want to force yourself to invest in a sector in which you do not even have experience ..Rather than losing money, better put that money somewhere else.

Instead of spreading your holdings all over the place and greatly increasing the difficulty, I would strongly recommend staying as close to home as possible (where you can actually go see your rentals).

It seems that these home prices of say 50 to 80k with renters are going to give the same difficulties or risk no matter what state.