Funny you mentioned a $600K house doesn’t pencil out as a rental.

I have 3 houses that Premier has managed over almost  9 years, and they do a great job keeping them rented to very long term tenants.

I'm all for safe housing and keep up with any issues on my properties but this is insane.

A lot of the advice I am seeing here and other places seems to oriented towards younger newbies - For ex: - house hacking or BRRR - these are not appealing to me. 

.$70k out of my pocket cash and sell the house when it is done for $360k to $400Kclosing cost $40k so 360 - 40 = 320 - 270 = 50K profit or 400k - 40k = 360k - 270k = 90k profitthe $360k is conservative for sale price chino hill ca.at least that was what i had bouncing in my head

My preferred options are:1. house-hack with a duplex under ARV; live in one unit => renovate => rent the other unit2. buy a SFH under ARV that could be converted into a duplex (preferably adjacent units vs top/bottom) - I'm assuming the biggest challenge with this strategy would be separating the infrastructure for utilities; and costly.

Quote from @Charles Evans: I'm a new house hacker here.

Great points, ZharaBirmingham has relatively steady and diverse rental demand, and I’ve seen many investors I work with have success with C/B class buy-and-holds.Location is key—areas near UAB, major employers, and popular suburbs tend to have the strongest rental demand, while C/D class markets offer solid affordable housing and Section 8 opportunities.

But if you do have a house that sits in expansive soils and are susceptible to shrinking and expanding they can put pressure on the basement walls (exacerbated by frost/thaw cycles) and cause them to crack horizontally.

Point is whatever overall monthly payment you are making on the house increases over time.