I'd highly recommend house hacking in your local market since you're in one of the highest cost of living areas in the US, especially if you're renting currently and planning on staying in the area for 5-10 years.It sounds sexy to go out and invest out of state for your first property.

WHAT IS A COST SEGREGATION STUDY?

Borrowing $200K at 4-5% will cost you $8000 - $10,000 of interest each year. 

In total it cost me about $500.Unfortunately, I was not able to reconcile the needs of my niche market with what the Capital Syndicate had to offer. 

Every project needs a quote and you should be able to estimate the material costs.

I've added a few things for very minimal cost that guests really love and increased revenue ~34% year over year.

Real estate is not the stock market and it's called buy & hold and not buy & sell for a reason.I did sell a few properties about 10 years ago when I learned the hard way that going into cheaper neighborhoods was not the right strategy for me, so that was basically a strategy correction and it was necessary, but also costly both in terms of dollars and time.

I've seen estimates that are off by 300% when all said and done (e.g. the original bid was $10k but the final cost was closer to $30k).

Additionally, working in a small-town market taught us how to effectively price properties for faster sales without compromising profit.

For example do you have a great w2 and can you afford to cover costs of a major repair or 3 months of vacancy?