It is now worth $160K through forced and natural appreciation.

This crazy woman did in fact get ahold of him and sent my BP post and she emailed me stating she hated landlords, and she even had a FB page against “Evil landlords during Corona” or something to that nature.

Seasoned investors by nature eliminate emotions as part of their analysis's, so your first sentence obviously not referring to seasoned investors.  

There will always be things outside your control that can derail any business (health, relationships, politics, natural disaster, etc).More important is to find a good mentor that will teach you how to develop leads.

Are they also incorporating actual single family homes if there aren't that many comps?

Find a good realtor buy a 3 or 4 unit in a decent area and you should be alright, from there you naturally start building a network and can grow it.Are you in London or Chicago?

We haven't quite got enough for accredited investor status, so syndications are (largely) out, though the short-term goal would to establish net worth at $1M (and maximize cash flow, naturally).

I became interested in investing in real estate is fascination from touring properties and imagining how to transform spaces, and build lives within them, how to increase property values through a few well chosen upgrades, tapping into the dream of having to earn a living doing what I naturally love to help others make smart real estate decisions.

I want to try and incorporate the BRRRR method if possible however I think to do that I have to go out of state to get the ball rolling, ideally probably in Iowa, since that's kind of where I'd like to buy some land and settle down. 

But because price to earnings was so steep (even Pre-COVID), real estate actually came to have a natural edge over the more liquid securities markets.