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

If you're purchasing a single family home you can use traditional financing like you probably did on your house or you can do a commercial loan.

to your point, if you save up so that you're in a strong financial position, house hack a solid duplex in a decent neighborhood, make smart decisions, and hold it indefinitely, you'll be fine.conversely, if you have $0 and somehow start out with a risky flip, or borrow $20K and spend it all on a magic mentoring program, or buy a terrible property in a neighborhood you've never been to, you may not be fine.

-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.

They have a good set of advertisements that focus on their whole house strategy which is good IMHO.We are running about 50/50 on bookings for 2025 right now.

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).

Try to setup an appointment with them.Ask the top agents in your office if you could hold open houses for them. 

If I owe $350k mortgage and I take out $100,000 HELOC and spend it on say a 6 month CD,And then I sell the house for $700kI would only have $250k profit right?

If it does go to probate, hopefully your brothers and you can amicably go the informal route vs formal (I've worked with families in both when buying properties out of probate and informal is FAR easier).Since there's no debt on the house, maybe you could sell with financing or maybe you could even buy out your brothers with financing -- that way you maintain ownership and just pay them a monthly amount.

Just buying a DG the way most people buy houses, or duplexes( typical 20% down payment and 20-30yr note)is not necessarily the best approach.