I am just pointing that out because if 4 works, the financing is much easier, if you are going through the trouble to do financing on a 5, it may pay to try and go bigger since you are already shifted into the commercial realm at that point. 

I started with 1 year OTR with my wife as a passenger before shifting into local jobs.

Markets shift and equity today can easily be gone tomorrow. 

Understandable, but keep in mind, as soon as you shift that equity to a new property via a 1031, you will be in the exact same boat.

That has generally been my mindset shift since I got into rentals, and I'm just at the beginning stages of "B".

I work a full-time schedule of 12-hr shifts, and my schedule is different every week and includes weekends, so there is no way I can take a classroom course without quitting my job.

That's a huge shift from their prior business model.That being said, if you need the 100% cash-to-close model to get the ball rolling, and you can find a deal that will net you $25k plus or more, this may be the only path (assuming you can pay the member fee and can't find any other HMLs that offer the services they do w/o a member fee).  

I just started shifting to passive forms of investment but if you want to do a show on wholesaling or flipping let me know.

The the other joker in that deck would be that if those duplexes are substantially identical and there is a sale to you at an obvious discount rate the IRS will be looking for a reason to find cost basis shifting.

Having recently transferred to a new department, I am able to take advantage of the radio silence in the machine and listen to 7-8 Bigger Pockets Podcasts per shift!