Just starting out! House hacking or small apartment complexes?

[Brennan Doherty]

Hey everyone, Brennan here, and I'm relatively new to real estate investing. I've been studying it and reading books non-stop for about the past 6-8 months and I can't wait to get started. I'm currently a senior in college and plan on graduating in the Spring with a degree in finance, and am currently still living with my parents and have no major expenses outside of paying for my car insurance and phone bill (Lucky, I know).

Given all the experience and knowledge on this site, I was just curious what would be the best way for me to start out? I planned on steering clear of the single family route, but planned on house hacking as soon as I graduated with a 3-4 family using the BRRRR strategy, and I'd like to repeat that for at least a few years, using FHA loans and refinancing at the end of each year to get a few cash flowing properties under my belt. I currently have enough money saved up to purchase a 3-4 family using an FHA/FHA 203k loan in my desired location, which is Worcester, MA. After I had a few of those properties by the time I'm 25-26, I would use a 1031 exchange to hopefully trade those into an apartment complex where things would really get rolling.

On the other hand, I'd like to get started as soon as possible and have a potential private money lender offering to lend up to 80k to get me started in real estate (I know this individual very well and they have a lot of faith in me, they can see how passionate I am about it). Not to mention I'm also actively looking for deals (smaller apartment buildings, 5-24 units) where perhaps seller financing or a master lease option would be a possibility so I can get started without much of my own capital, but obviously these are difficult to find given my inexperience in finding off market deals. Given all of these options, which one would the seasoned professionals out there recommend? Should I wait to graduate and simply start off by house-hacking a few triplexes/quads and go from there, or should I start actively looking for deals to utilize my private lender and to get my foot in the door and start scaling as early as possible? Any help at all is appreciated and I'm looking forward to hearing the responses from the professionals out there! 

Sorry for the long post which seemed to be all over the place, I'm just trying to figure out a solid plan for building my portfolio as quickly as possible. Thank you everyone!