Real estate is a very capital intensive industry and if you do not have the money the odds of success are very low - it is no different than starting any other business - how many people do you know are successful when they start with zero?

Additionally, don’t overlook the opportunity cost of pulling money from your 401k—those funds could have been compounding in the market.I’d also suggest stress testing your ROI by running scenarios with higher expenses or lower rents to see how resilient the investment is.

Turned a single family house that was poorly marketed but in a great area of my city, listed mid-winter where there's less competition, into a duplex for all intensive purposes and used airbnb to rent out rooms.

Now is not the time to “test the market” with an ambitious price to “see what happens.”

R&D is like split testing, trial and error is "I'll be damned to spend the time investing in knowledge so let's just hope we survive the guessing". 

However if you plan on buying 3-4units, there is a trigger rule for FHA, it is called the self sufficiency test.

I generally agree that buying SFH as first investment is an easy way to test the waters; however, if you’re set on REI I suggest buying a duplex or quad.

The challenge with the FHA guidelines is the self sufficiency test.

Financing-  build a relationship with a regional banker, don’t shop for interest rates, start small and build history and loyalty they are your team, Cross collateralize, deposit CD/MM or custodial account with bank for loan, give them monthly updates, nail your deal analysis, do stress tests on your deal analysis-cost/interest rate/deal length/ sale price etc. 12.  

I was drawn to this investment mainly to test out the new padsplit model.