Renting out one side can help offset your mortgage, which is a huge advantage while you're building financial stability.

no one is going to play that role if you don't.

If our occupancy starts to drop, we can increase google adds by month or reinstate the bus benches and SP Aggregator.Our cheapest advertisement is our Billboard Road sign out front for $18,000 one time.I always say it's your money. 

well you dont say how much you have in it.. but if you can sell now and lose 10k and get out of a HML that would be my suggestion.HML  if they go into default interest and you could look at losing quite a bit especially if your HML is one of those that are not forgiving and wont give an inch on what they are owed.

How many people have the idea of buying a duplex to live in one side and rent out the other?

Great question - goal is to eventually rent out both units to total $3400/mo - it would be closer to $2000/mo for the one unit until repairs are done and my lender is ok with it no longer being my primary residence. 

Look at one or two of the units, do they look like crap or do they look like the neighborhood??

One thing to think about is when doing heloc on primary if you want to refinance you need to get their signoff as well as your primary loan which could cause complications.  

We are fairly new to real estate investing with one single-family, cash-flowing property under our belt in Augusta, GA.

Additionally, we rented out a room for one year.