One 3 months and one shorter, I will keep going down on the rent for the one, then once that is rented I can afford to be slower on the other one - just can't have 2 empty in one building.

@Davis Chem Yes but even at 500K, can you afford a 3-5% down payment?

Anyway, I said something like "How can you afford a flat screen TV when you can't afford rent?"

I don't see the trend slowing in 2022 with the lack of affordable housing, money in the system, and continued low interest rates. 

I really want to turn those properties into Airbnb listings due to promising ROI and no HOA restrictions … The biggest challenge for me is to hire someone on the ground to set it up and coordinate with vendors, for example running errands to pick up the keys from my agent, purchase / receive / assembly furniture, installing smart lock so I can have full control over my property remotely..

I can give you countless examples of “family offices”.Depending on who these people are, you could jumpstart your investing career by bringing them the right syndication and walking away with a percentage of something much larger than you would be able to afford for years

After that, they can get money from any source they want for as long as they want.When a tenant moves in with borrowed money, there's an exceedingly high chance the free money will eventually run out and they won't be able to afford the rent.

Section 8 does a full financial background test for them to determine how much they can afford of that $1450 rent amount based on their current income.

I would probably be able to afford one single-family further east in a b-c class neighborhood.I appreciate your note about risk and diversifying my portfolio/holdings.

Once you have a market and an agent, reach out to a lender and get that process started and start analyzing deals the agent sends over to get a feel for the market and what you can afford in it.