Your plan to house-hack and reinvest is solid stay focused on properties that align with your financial goals, and you’ll build a successful portfolio over time.

Prioritize your financial stability.

This led to a nearly $3,000-$4,000 bill for new installations until I clarified the situation and found that the unit already had hookups.

At the time it made financial sense.

With actual cash, you just transfer it. yes, but you can still bid with lender approval - without appraisal contingency - you send in deal (app), it gets approved by lender its functionally the same as cash (except in true lightning speed situations where there is a quick auction with little time to prep but thats generally pretty rare I'd think)Right, but that's not cash or functionally the same as cash because the lender can change the terms at the last minute, as often happens with less experienced hard money lenders.

Buying an investment property at 21 shows amazing foresight and financial responsibility.

I will return to this situation in the end of this post, but first let me show you why the age of a person can be tricky when it comes to the IRS.

While both involve finding and properly securing a site and bringing it to full entitlement, the ground-up process includes the land piece but gets way more involved and complex to execute.The full "Monty" for ground-up development needs to include financial literacy, an explanation of metrics, and how they work.

You explained "STR arbitrage can be a successful entry point for somebody with the right situation".

Some lenders work with 220+ lenders and can really understand which lenders are best for you based on your situation.