Working on my first house-hack while in college

[Jacob Willett]

I am currently 20 years old in my 3rd out of a 5 year college program. I have been interested in real estate in the background for a few years but in the past couple months I have gone much deeper into it and I would like to start building my portfolio before I get out of school to hopefully get the ball rolling as soon as possible. I currently have about $8,000 in capital after paying for tuition.

I have been researching through books, forums, and this site and my current plan is to house-hack a 2-4 unit multi-family, financed with an FHA owner-occupant loan so I can utilize the 3.5% down, since I don't have a ton of capital to work with.

I am looking for anyone who has gone through a similar strategy and can provide general advice, things they wish they would have done differently, things they did that they would NOT have done differently, etc..

My main areas of question at the moment are:

• How can I effectively evaluate a specific market area to determine a reasonable purchase price and reasonable rent amounts for a property in that area?
• What is a good resource to learn about estimating renovation/ repair costs?
• Fixer-Upper vs Turn-Key properties for first time rental owners?
• How to find good real-estate meetups around my area?
• Major red flags to look out for when analyzing properties?

I am new to this platform but have heard great things about it so I very much appreciate any help you are willing to provide me in getting started on my journey!