Across the board, the worse the neighborhood, the better the cash flow, the better the neighborhood, the trade off for tenants base, better schools, low crime, etc etc.

Connecting with local GC groups in your area will help you connect with subcontractors, find out tips and tricks of the trade in your local area (since all areas and their real estate differ slightly).Also, have you considered the motivation behind building a brand-new duplex versus finding one on the market?

This may provide low cash flow up front but it is a way of scaling if you are good at adding value and then trading up that value.

My cost wont necessarily be the same or comparable as I GC my own projects and have trade skills.

., get a higher paying job, work two jobs, go to trade school, get a higher paying degree, live in affordable area, etc...these are things that most of us did).

The reason I would end up paying ordinary income tax on Sch-E is that I get NO other deduction whatsoever like I would get for LLC-B (S-corp). 

A 1031 exchange allows you to defer taxes by exchanging real property held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment for other real property of like kind, which is also to be held for similar purposes.

If this is not something you're interested in delving into and learning to a high degree, then investing in publicly traded REITs would be another good option for you, which have historically returned about 13.5 per cent Per year over the past 50 years (1977-present), beating the US stock market by two per cent and even beating private real estate investing by 4 per cent (that's compared with the average real estate investor, not the experts here at Bigger Pockets).

The only thing we can think of is he deals with a lot of international trade and money and maybe it’s OFAC we just get a scripted message every time we talk to someone so we got lawyers involved. 

Non traded public REIT?