Need help with Investment Strategy

[Ben Curtin]

Hello BP,

I'm a relatively new member here, but I've been interested for a very long time, and especially making money with real estate. 

I'm 24 yrs old with a beautiful wife and a soon due baby, and I have a day job as an airline pilot. I'm renting an apartment right now for a pretty costly $1200/mo.

My 10 year goal down the road is to be living in a single family home, and own a bunch of rental properties creating income for me in the Seattle area where I live. 

Now, I'm making pretty good on my plan so far, taking the necessary steps to obtain my first rental property. And I'm sort of at a standstill right now because of the sellers market. 

I have been looking at getting into a fourplex/triplex, and using an FHA loan to live in one unit, while renting out and managing the other units for a few years before buying my first single family home. But there aren't a ton of fourplexes/triplexes getting added to the market currently so the pickings are slim.

I've found this duplex which needs a little roof work, and overall I wouldn't want to live in the area which it's located due to the distance of my daily commute. But it seems like it has potential. it costs about 110k and it's a short sale, and it would generate about 1400-1500/mo in rental income. And I was wondering if buying this duplex as a NON owner occupant and learning how to manage a property without living there, is a better way to start as opposed to getting an FHA loan on a triplex or fourplex? I suppose it's all in the numbers, and the duplex+single family home for us to live in seems to make financial sense, but I'm nervous about getting into two separate properties as opposed to waiting for one bigger property to come on to the market to get it wrapped up in one mortgage.

What do you guys think?