Yes, agree with the above:--good communication with your insurance company--liability insurance-- fencing, signage and safety measures in place

I currently have a portfolio of SFH in Indiana and will always jump on a good deal for a SFH but I have been considering scaling up into multifamily commercial real estate (apartments, etc.)

Mostly due to the fact my spouse and I agreed on her to have zero involvment in any sort of RE investing (and its our home) I think once you have a good 6-12 months of reserve cash (operating expenses for your own life saved as a back up incase things go bad) save enough liquidity to get the ball rolling on your first invesment.

Good yields and not super correlated to stocks or RE.

It's probably just worth walking away on this one unless you got a really good price.

Good question.

If you can house hack where you are at, that alone will be enough learning to give you a good taste of what you might be looking for.

Sounds you have definitely worked hard to make those stay in good shape and steady tenants, which is excellent!

Of course we want to grow and scale, but the beauty of this strategy is the flexibility - don't think that just because you dont cash flow right after you move, it is not a good investment. 

City proper has been on 5 year bear market completely unrelated to anything political, the suburbs have been adding inventory since the summer but are still very low but any measure and have actually gotten tighter the last few month, while I am open to the idea these cuts could eventually have some effect on the market, about 20% of the dc area is federal employees, let’s say the federal government cut the work force 25% which would be huge, that’s 5% of the population, but a good number of those people are either two income households where one person works in the private and/or the person being laid can go get a similar job in the provide sector l, the percentage of households who would be forced to sell thier house over this is likely in very low single digits.