If you could afford it, I would make the improvement.

You apply for a commercial loan, and get a commercial insurance policy.however you would lose all the benefits afforded to owner occupants like the capital gains exclusion in doing so.

Everything I've found through my own research has frustratingly been about how to get into affordable housing as a renter rather than how to list a property as a landlord.  

Make a payment plan that will work for them and waive late fees if they stick to the program.For example: if rent is $1000 per month but they can only afford to pay you $500.  

Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-upMost people who use DM as a strategy give up after the first mailing if no one calls.As you map out your strategy, make sure you budget out how many mailings you can afford and select a list that clearly targets your audience.Not all lists are equal, I pull my list from Yardi Matrix.

Those who can qualify for lending technically can afford "more home" and push prices. 

Pueblo is economical and affordable driving distance to military bases in Colorado Springs. 

I need the help of anyone with intimate knowledge of these areas to determine which pocket should (hopefully) be the best long-term investment.Currently my situation is this, we have been very blessed and are able to afford a very nice home in any of these areas (up to 4M).

Since we can't afford to work for free, we're having conversations with affected clients to come to an agreement on a flat monthly fee and what their expectations are for that fee, while tenants aren't paying and we can't evict them.

If you deliver outsized value your investors will provide introductions to their friends and you can grow more organically and graduate to other exemptions, control your deals more, lower your cost of equity capital, and have a fund construct that affords the opportunity to provide capital quickly to be more competitive on the buy-side for projects.