Any advice or perspective would be incredibly helpful.Thanks!  

Looking for a house we could house hack, had an incredibly low interest rate on mortgage and house has increased in value about 42%, an estimated 180k in equity.

However, when you don't know what you don't know, this is an incredibly dangerous and risky position to be in with such an expensive investment.Just my 2 cents.

Assume for a moment its close to max tax bracket ie. nearly 49% (Federal + State), roughly $17K.

But not a moment before.

Right now, it is incredibly tough to make even a few hundred a month with traditional strategies.

So as a newer person in an area if you want a lot of bids before you close you'll normally end up with the more expensive guys or the ones that don't have work at the moment (usually for a reason).

Huntsville, AL is my #1 at the moment, followed by Augusta, GA.

That’s great advice Taz, I’m currently working on saving enough money to get started, house hacking is hard for me at the moment because I just bought a house 2 years ago, I would have to sell my house(which is in a great neighborhood great location) and use that money to fund the duplex which isn’t totally out of the question, I would like to keep the house if possible but also would like to get real estate investing more.

Most mortgage companies will not call loan due if payments are current but you do run that risk and need to be prepared to payoff or refi at a moments notice.