Do your research and run some numbers, but if you can buy a 4br house, rent out the other three rooms and be left with a very small mortgage payment, you can start saving for the next one and then rinse and repeat every few years. 

It's great to hear about your success with this multi-family buy-and-hold investment.

Congratulations on getting this deal going.

As a civil engineer I would recommend finding an engineer that has done work in this region before. 

Or we gradually perform high-quality updates for a live-in flip, then roll the equity into a new home.Regarding rental income, we aim to boost income, lower our effective tax rate by generating more low tax-drag income with rental income (since there’s not much we can do to lower out W2 tax bills) and have retirement cash flow.To compare the financial impact over 10-20 years, we want to analyze renting versus flipping.

I live in Arizona and homes here are sky high, youd be lucky to get %6 interest rate, I would be a 1st time home buyer, apart from being 1099 employed would Trumps real estate plans benefit the little guys like me?

Funny enough, I was going to suggest you move out of SF due to the high cost ;-) I'd suggest going down the SF condo route to start as financing for commercial units is a lot more difficult than residential properties.

I’ve hit my goal now so I’m not taking out anymore loans.

Quote from @Carolyn Fuller: If your MTRs are near a university, you should also list on sabbaticalhomes.com I haven't heard of this one, thank you!

No matter whether you are looking at commercial or residential property, the deals that “pencil out” at OFFERING price are few and far between these days.