Do this for as many listings as you can in your immediate area to see how frequently they are booked.

Surround yourself with the absolute best subject matter experts you can find while you captain the ship.  

With the amount of liability landlords are now (and please, if anyone has more insight than I do, fill me in.) subject to, I no longer have a desire to.

You run a commercial property like a small business, and you can manually force it's appreciation, and not be subject to the whims of market appreciation, as you are with the single family market.

Seems too risky for me.However, I can buy an "off market"  3 bed 2 bath in Phoenix or Mesa for very little down, no bank needed using Subject To, take over the loan, sell it on Lease Option and get a $20,000 Option fee along with cash flow generally of $500 per property.

However, that isn't how you should be looking for comparables).If, however, the reason you are finding few comps is that the subject property is in a sparsely populated area, or one with extremely few sales, then that is a tougher situation. 

I’ve now done 33 deals, a handful of which a frequently-deployed military husband has never seen.

@Brian Garlington While I may look scattered, and maybe I am, my goal is to find properties in areas that are close to me or that I travel to/through frequently.

Remodel kitchenWe invest what we can and return more than any of our loans so we don't pay any extra principal down.You should maintain an ample liquid emergency fund, but the size of that is completely subjective to what makes you two feel secure.

The loan requirements are the same as a traditional FHA loan underwriting (owner occ, 3.5% down at 580 credit or better, Mortgage Insurance, etc) except you can use up to 75% of the rent roll to lower your DTI ratio, and you cannot have any existing FHA loans outstanding unless 100 miles away from subject property.The 203K loan has a lot of upside but is quite cumbersome to navigate.