seems like you got to do your own homework to find out what is best for you.
buying and renting, you need to factor in all costs such as mortgage pymt (remember that they just raise mortgage rate and may keep going up), maintenance fees, property tax..... and how easy is it to rent the place and for how much can you rent it for...then you can see if you will actually have money left over....overall, you could probably have some cash left over...but it all depends mostly on your martgage pymt.
as for flipping...you need to factor in real extate agent's commission....
to be honest if u are trying to buy a place as an investment, now is really not the best timing....