$75k to invest. Advice to achieve $5k/month through REI?

[Brian Owens]

Hey BiggerPockets! This is my first post, though I've been listening to the podcast for about 2 years now. My wife and I have worked hard to save for our first investment...We've gone back and forth over the best strategy, and thought we'd reach out to the community here for advice on how to achieve our goals. 

Our first goal is to replace one of our jobs through rental income.

Some details about our situation:

-We have about $75k in cash saved to invest

-We own our primary residence. I believe it's worth about $300k, and we owe about $235k. 

-We essentially have no other debt

-We both have decent jobs, but would like to free up some of the time they demand. Especially as we consider starting a family. 

We would need about $10k/mo to completely replace both of our incomes...But our first goal is to free just one of us. So $5k/mo is the target.

We've listened to and read everything available on the subject of BRRRR investing, flipping, wholesaling, short term rentals, multi-family, etc...But have yet to be able to pull the trigger on a deal.

Recently, we've been thinking BRRRR investing is the best way to hit our goal. (open to other ideas though).

We'd like to find a strategy we can implement in our area so we can manage the properties ourselves. We live in Williamsburg, VA...Virtually ZERO multifamilies, duplexes, triplexes, etc...Mostly gated retirement communities and a handful of middle class neighborhoods like our own.

Last week, we put an offer on a town home of $100k, that we felt could be rented out for $1250. Unfortunately, the seller couldn't get close to our offer because they purchased in 2007 =S...Had they accepted, our thought was that we'd put $75k into the purchase (large down payment and about 20K in rehab)...Then attempt to cash out refinance based on an ARV of $140k...Then we'd simply rinse and repeat...

Since that deal didn't work out (and it took us a LOOOONG time to find that one opportunity), we've continued to look but felt like maybe it was a good time to get some insight from some more experienced real estate investors on what they would do if they were in our situation.

Buying $100k town houses that are "almost" paid for, and refinancing our money out/into another one doesn't feel like the BEST thing we could do to achieve our goal, but it's where we are currently.

Any thoughts or advice on how to invest in our situation is much appreciated! 

Thanks everyone