Then they get on a forum and post something that gives them a tiny dopamine bump.  

Seems a tiny bit different from the post.

Sounds like you’re not wanting to DIY, and like I believe Gary said $13k seems off the chart, especially for a tiny little bathroom.

I have a opportunity to purchase a tiny home that a co-worker and I worked on.

In very very tiny print said something about a credit booster but never not once said anything about what we needed to do on a credit booster but we could move forward in buying a house.

If my choice is to stop investing and keep working my W2 forever or keep investing and risk playing a tiny role in a larger societal problem, I'm going with the latter.

SW thats on the west/north side of the river is good, the tiny sliver of SW on the south/east side of the river not so much.The public housing in SW near the stadiums is an issue, and will likely remain so. 

Its the same thing in cheap markets were they sell say 130k new construction.. those deals usually have 10 to 15% gross margins so they are making 13 to maybe 20k if they are really lucky net profit but getting good leverage and pumping out 50 in a year.We will build about 40 homes this year.. so while we don't hit homeruns we make it up in volume and god willing the market holding and the star's aligning and every other lucky charm we can pull .Like @Will Barnard even though it was an outlier for us we did a 5 million dollar flip and made 1.5 on it.. but that was not something we could recreate .. and I don't have the stones to do that these days.. with my cheaper homes I know my bank will let me make them into rentals if they don't sell and with the rents the way they are they would cash flow or be a tiny bit negative as we rode out the market... 

Compared to what you did which was househack a small  multi and the absolute best way for someone to buy their first property full stop.while there will be sub to deals out there they will a a very tiny fraction of the RE market as a whole so your fishing in a bucket instead of the lake..

Sold them all for a tiny profit but left unscathed.Thought I was done with real estate in general but ended up hearing about FHA and bought a 4plex locally here in Oakland with only $12K down.