Great call out! 

I love that you rented two of your bedrooms as mid term and short term rentals and made enough to pay for the mortgage and now you are going to use the rental income to show you can qualify for another property.This is an excellent strategy and one more people should consider doing in this inflationary environment to offset the biggest cost in their budget--housing.As you rightly point out, you can use this strategy with every house you buy accumulating a portfolio of houses that you originally started out living in as a primary residence every two years.Well done and more people should consider doing the same, or rent their garage, or shed, or a boat, or an extra car.Love it!

Happy to jump on a call sometime to chat.I wish you all the best.

No, if you want a low downpayment you could buy it with a FHA loan and live in one of the units the first year. 

Buildium and Appfolio seem more expensive, but I have setup calls with account managers with both.

There's a great meetup called "Pints and Properties" hosted by Adam Compagnone.

Have a plan and target property, and be ready to buy. 

Sometimes the commission checks can be low (i have a client purchasing a 50k property tomorrow at 2%) but helping someone buy their first investment property has been fun.

When the banks saw that there was a huge wave of defaults, they stopped lending so people that needed bank loans to buy a house were not able to buy houses.  

There is no problem buying off market and getting financing.