FHA/PMI products), as we're only trying to put about 5% down to use the excess cash for rehab. 

Currently all my rents are in excess of 1% of acquisition costs with one being in excess of 4% of acquisition costs. 

And you can 1031 exchange into another property to defer any excess gain and completely avoid depreciation recapture. 

On my end - I've heard that some of the easiest (and potentially cheapest) tricks could be:- applying a fresh coat of paint on the exterior / interior living room spaces of the home- refurnishing doors / door knobs - updating the lighting of bathrooms or kitchen area light fixtures- bathroom refurbishment- curb appeal / clearing out excess weeds/trees/shrubbery.I've also heard of situations where the home owner would either offer to build, or provide a backyard shed for the tenant as additional storage space, charging an extra $100-$150 per month if the tenant wanted to use it. 

Second invoice had a description of Plumbing-Install New Shower Mixing Valve (Materials and labor included) charge $350.00.While I understand when things go out and need to be replaced etc. but this seems excessive for the same bathroom, Shouldn't they have had just one plumber do everything. 

If the above does not work, PM me the address and I may be able to suggest some Excess (surplus) Lines companies that will write the land.

Hi @Doc Godfrey, welcome to BP.Your Cash on Cash sounds high to me.I get total expenses in excess of $1400/month (numbers below) and then cash flow of about $165/month.I'm not 100% sure how you are financing this, so I can't give you an accurate CoC ROI.  

I'm interested in using some portion of that to house hack once I know what city my first full time job will be in.My first concern is, I often see it recommended that people should use a low down payment loan, such as an FHA loan, to purchase a small multifamily property to house hack, but this seems like an excessive amount of leverage to me.  

When the transaction closes the lender will payoff your balance on the HML and any excess proceeds, i.e. the $14K in my example above, are generally wired into your bank account as part of the closing process.If you ever want to model out specific or hypothetical scenarios to dive into this further, feel free to PM me and we'll set some time to talk.

  $80k sounds pretty high to me even to tear-down-rebuild, which is probably an excessive approach just to make parts align right.The dividing line between owner-occupiers and investors in buying and selling decisions is the investor approach is the numbers.