Consume a lot of data and speak to a lot of folks before making a decision.

I re-grouted the entire second floor (kitchen/living/dining area) which ended up being very time consuming and labor-intensive.

If it's bad debt (such as consumer credit card), I'd suggest you work on reducing that bad debt first.

Business loans in the name of your business typically do not report to TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian on the consumer side.

I'm just at the beginning of my learning and have barely scratched the surface of consuming the wealth of information that Bigger Pockets has to offer.My original thought was to purchase houses for rental and hire a property management company to make that mostly passive.

When the sellers are proactively pressuring you to do that, that's another thing and it means everyone knows this property is worth less than what you are willing to pay.If someone with a good DTI is putting 20% down and the appraisal comes in say 3% or 2% short, I can restructure the loan such that their down payment remains unchanged but they take on PMI, often times I'll go all the way down to the next 5% increment so they keep cash in their pocket while I'm at it (IE: consumer 'feels' they are putting 20% down based on sales price, underwriter views it as being 'really' 17% down due to appraisal, well screw that 15% down gets the same PMI rate and lets them keep money in their pocket, so we're doing that not 17%).

Scale is amazing, with a team, but time consuming when you're going at it by yourself and you dont want to stretch yourself too thin.

I just thought there may be an easier and less time consuming way

Once you realize how intensive and time consuming leasing is you tend to stay in your own lane and then compensate those that enjoy doing that leasing part as a business model.    

And stay away from consumer debt.