I believe local investors, agents, lenders, property managers, and contractors all have valuable insights, especially for someone brand new to Real Estate like my self.

I think that's a great approach I have a lot of clients who self manage have no issues at all.  

Hi,I am an investor in single family homes and am interested to use my equity in them to start investing in multi unit shopping center retail.

Buy a 2-4 unit, close to home.

If we rent the unit at $1,425, I have an estimated monthly cashflow of $302 (rent at $1450, cashflow is $325) I DO include vacancy, repairs, and cap exp in my Box2 Expenses.

You can 100% use an FHA-203k renovation loan on multi-unit properties up to 4 units. 

So I've been thinking of joining the Air Force for 4 years, during those 4 years I would buy 3-4 unit properties which later after the 4 years I can get into Commericial real estate by doing a 1031 exchange or getting loans from private investors so that I can buy bigger multi-family properties.

If you are attempting to use income for the non-conforming unit, they will need to verify that it can legally be used as a rental unit.

If you can take that and buy a 2-4 unit property and live in one and rent the others, with the aprox $110-120k you are putting down you should be able to be in a good position and make a much better rate on your investment.

For our second STR, we are currently researching Sherman, potentially / ideally, a less expensive duplex that we could rennovate and self manage from Dallas with workers coming to the area in mind.