My wife has given me full discretion to price the medium term rentals as there is already built-in regular turns and often these are traveling professionals whose employers are footing the bill, so my wife doesn't sweat taking company's money versus individuals.

Can it be done in that time, well yes but it will take a ton of time and sweat equity.

If you do the rehab work yourself they call it an "over contribution of sweat equity" and that's viewed to be the same as making a cash contribution to your IRA.

You are talking about people's legacies, their life savings, all their blood, sweat, and tears of work for their profession or their business built up often after many decades of time.How can someone take something like that so lightly? 

Developers are not dripping a drop of sweat, not a single bead.

I think there is a lot of value in sweat equity primarily if you're a 9-5'er and aren't self employed / run a biz I just want to stress the importance of having things done right the first time.

Spending $40K on a home is much better than spending $40K on blank promises and misleading companies looking to make a quick buck off of your hard sweat. 

Good question mate.Been in the game long enough that I can sell till the "cow's come home" lolOr find a way to convert, monetize, optimize, etc...It's against my ethics so I choose not to.And I've done my fair share of charity and still do to this day.Feeding the poor per seBut I refuse to "Feed" the lazy and ignorant (And wealthy) with free information that took blood, sweat and tears and years to get.I'll let the guru's monetize on such folks with their books, guides and masterminds lol

We move somewhat frequently, every 2 years or so, so we always look to buy a cosmetic fixer with some room for sweat equity in areas that we do our best to research are going to maintain current value or (hopefully) appreciate due to trends, schools, walkability, incoming commercial investment and perceived desirability. 

@Evan DieffenbachHey Evan, my take on this is I think you should either keep trying to accumulate more and more cash (which may involve just making the regular monthly payment on your student loan(s) as you seem to have a very reasonable rate of interest) to eventually get to a point where you have some more capital to finance an investment via commercial financing (non owner occupied), or, to get into real estate investing sooner, use what you have saved up now (but make sure you still have enough left over for closing costs and reserves) and do a 3.5% down FHA loan and buy a multi family (2-4 units) that needs a bit of work and live in one of the units and try to increase rents in the other units as you go / as you make little DIY repairs to try to limit how much you have to put into repairing things, if you are handy, you can really create some sweat equity this way.