With this being said staging a house poorly will also not have a desirable effect your looking to achieve.  

I guess you need to evaluate your goals and see how quickly you want to achieve your passive income #'s  You might speak with your loan officer and see if he thinks you buying a flip/rental in the near term would prohibit you from buying your future primary residence.You could also buy a property that you think will be a good rental, make repairs, live in it short term, and then move on to the next house.  

@Ayana MingoI am not sure what you are trying to achieve.  

@Peter Grosso I think the next market you should invest in depends on what you are looking to achieve from your investment, and what is your short term and long term investment strategy.

The real question is not how many houses a month but what kind of lifestyle and what income you want to achieve? 

As I mentioned above, I limited my thoughts about achieving this outcome.

You ought to start with some goals and figure out how you will achieve those goals.

Welcome Chris,What cap rate are you trying to achieve for your buy and hold properties ?

How you achieve that is your specialty.

Each property he wants to buy would cost about $140K and will give him $850 NET cash flow per month.In an effort to get the most "bang for the buck" I would suggest him to, instead of paying cash for, let's say, 20 houses, put a 25% down payment and finance the remaining, allowing those same $3M to get him about 85 of those $140K properties, which would now generate a $350 positive cash flow (after servicing the mortgages).The only question here is........Is getting 85 mortgages something even remotely possible to achieve?