New investor starting with duplex househack

[Nicholas Almgren]

Hey BP community!

I'm 26 years old and I'm in the beginning stages of real estate investing where I'm reading every book I can get my hands on and the fire is lit! I cant believe I have waited so long to get into real estate investing. At this point I am still learning but I would like to pull the trigger on a duplex for my first investment by house hacking. My fiancé and I will get an FHA loan with hopes of only putting 3.5% down. We currently rent an apartment and are pretty tired of just paying off someone else's mortgage and so we want to start making our money work for us. We work full time jobs and both go to college full time ( I'm almost done). The goal is to start small and then invest in more multi-family homes (over time ) via house hacking each property until we can pyramid up into commercial apartments and eventually purchase our first home while generating passive income from our rental properties( we will continue to work in our current professions). I know its not that simple and that there is more that comes along with real estate investing but that's my vision.

A couple of questions I would like to ask are:

-how much money should you have in an emergency fund before jumping into your first multi-family investment? To be honest we don't have a stock pile of money lying around, we are budgeting for the 3.5% down payment. We would like to find a duplex that is in our price range to where the monthly payments will be close to what we currently pay for rent now just in case of tenant vacancy. We live in Happy Valley Oregon where selling prices are high and even higher in Portland Oregon where most of the duplexes are located. I have caught the "real estate bug" where I just want to jump in but I also know how rushing into an investment can take a turn for the worse. Which leads me to my last question which is should I wait to save more money and possibly even move to a somewhat better market( state) where prices aren't so high? Living here and investing here gives me the advantage of knowing the area but at the end of the day it takes money to make money in regards to my first question about an emergency fund for future repairs a property will undoubtedly require. I'm in the process of buying " The book on investing in real estate with low and no money down" I'm sure I will find more answers through reading that book and others but I am ready to get started and thought I would ask the Bigger Pockets community for advice. Thanks for your time! I look forward to your responses.