My plan was to purchase a lot and build a foundation, bring in a doublewide/manufactured house. have it placed on foundation and have a structural engineer reclassify it as fixed real estate. then, I would refinance. 

Focus on analyzing properties and starting small, like house hacking or buying a single-family home to rent out rooms, while ensuring cash flow and maintaining an emergency fund.

Here's a fundamental explanation to get your juices flowing:Assume a house costs $200,000 and rents for $1,500.

-Bill Mcbride newsletter if you want narrow and deep insights about weekly trends in housing -JBRE is a good one for deep dive on housing stats.

EBR housing allows around $1,300/month for 3 bedrooms.

In short, I can afford the additional $1100/mo cost of a second house, even until I rent it out.I have around $35K in HYSA and emergency funds that I could use for a down payment, but that's less than 20% which would be required for a conventional loan, assuming full purchase price.

Quote from @Jordan Kaylor: I'm new to real estate investing and have secured a HELOC on my existing home.  

I work for a local house flipper in the Greensboro area (Winston Salem).

We recently relocated from our primary residence to a rental property ourselves (we recently welcomed a baby, and our house no longer accommodated our evolving needs).

Lets connect and I'm in Texas focused on asset class of Assisted Living and senior housing.