What happens after the first year?

[Cosette Trantow]

I'm in my education phase right now and I've determined that I want to start out with an FHA house hack (hopefully a 4 plex). I also have the VA loan available to me. My biggest question now is: After I've lived in the house for a year, how do I use that property to get my next one? I can't believe that there will be equity in it as far as what I've paid on the principle, so is the idea that I'd make improvements to the place throughout that year with the rent (even though I think I should do it before I rent it out, right?), or just save any cash flow I might have to save up for a down payment on property #2? In that case, I'll have to make sure that I have a lot of cash flow to save up in one year so it seems like I'd have to find a really really good deal because of the PMI.

Maybe I'm just really confused as to how this is supposed to work out. My plan is to get an FHA loan to house hack for a year, move out and refi to a non-owner occupied loan, then do it again for the next year with my VA loan and maybe one more year after that. I'm sure there are a lot of things I don't understand about this so any light shed on this would be very helpful. I didn't really find any posts about this.

I'm also not sure how much money I should plan on having on hand for initial rehab costs.

Thank you for your time.