Those that exist are super pricey and the cap rate is super low for even blue collar areas.So right now given the lack of realistic multis to parlay into, I'm considering just eating the tax.

While there, watching the sunset over the ocean, brainstorm why you want to do real estate and which of the following below you want to do & where.Decide which kind of investor you want to be (SFR, Commercial, Land, Tax Liens, Passive, HML, Multi-Family, Notes, Fix & Flip, Buy & Hold, "Subject To", apartments, duplexes, assisted living, REOs, Foreclosures, Short Sales), etc.

It's such a rock solid neighborhood -  16 min Metra/30min Blue line to downtown, 94 and 90 access, bus terminal, and a disproportional amount of city workers with good incomes and families.    

She just kind of mentioned it out of the blue without any call to action, which triggered my initial post. 

Santa Clara is prime blue chip real estate.

You can try Peter Grimm in Ocean. 

They ain’t blue, they’re purple. 

If you want to stick to the DC/MD/VA area, you might want to consider house hacking a SFH and Airbnbing an extra level/room/basement/crawlspace/fallout shelter-- like you said multis are few and far between here, but you might be able to find some in areas that show up as that beautiful deep navy blue on the Trulia crime map.I live in northern VA but do all my investing outside the area. 

Classic case of a city that once manufactured one or more products and had a strong blue collar influence, but now is mainly low income service jobs.  

Sure, who wouldn't want 1500 extra bones laying around, but there's quite a bit of risk with a beach side duplex sitting right by the ocean.