Buyer's have all the power now.

@Andy Oshodi the REI business is hard but house hacking is one of the easiest most powerful strategies out there.

The builder is just leveraged to the point that he cannot afford to turn his n the power and he needs to liquidate the property.  

In short, this market has a huge barrier of entry and it is capital or very strong borrowing power and usually both.There are lenders who will lend to a no exp investor, but not some 500k Long Island property that needs 200k in work and will resell for 1.2 Million. 

We want the to be able to have more buying power later this year as well so we don’t want to jeopardize the debt to income ratio of both of the  partner?

But the power of a house hack is not from the cashflow after you leave, its in the immediate reduction of living costs you get while living there and the incredibly low down payment options you can use.  

If you are buying the $1.5M+ mix-use buildings the buyer pool is much smaller and there's far greater negotiation power on the part of the buyer.

The Power of networking, Making High Level Connections is the new book for this month Speaker, Alexandra Labbar.

For distressed properties I intend to keep as rentals, the buyer pool is greatly reduced and being able to close cash and waive inspections provides a lot of negotiating power. 

If you want to put more brain power into it and potentially make more money I think closer to downtown could be a good fit.