With $50K in capital, you can do both, house hack and flip. With 10k-20K, get a 3.5%FHA Loan on a turn key four plex, in a neighborhood like Uptown,NE, Seward where rents go for 500-700 per room or more. Personally I prefer St Paul though rents are higher in Minneapolis. You can get a 4plex in the 350-550 range. Once you get that cash flowing, use the remainder of the reserves to get a 100% Hard Money loan to purchase and rehab the next property, which you flip for capital or refinance to hold.
Or maybe rehab a 4 plex with the hard money loan to start off with, refi out with the built in equity as your "down payment", and get a line of credit for the capital for your next unit.
If you have the capital, I think it's best practice to leverage it as much as possible. Buying a 50K house wouldn't do that, putting down 20% down payment would do it a little, but you can do much more with the 50K. I would also leave 10-15K in reserves set aside, just in case you need to fix something or spruce up your units, and not use the whole 50K.
PM me if you want to discuss it more. I wish I were in your shoes. I only have 15K to leverage but gonna make it work real soon. Good luck.
