The tax advantages of buying/holding gas stations are pretty great.Many of the components of gas stations including pumps, tanks, external parking areas, and other equipment are classified as either 5 or 15 year property so you can bonus depreciate a lot of it (minus the land value) and get significant deductions in year 1.With the 2025 bonus depreciation rate at 40%, a $1 million gas station acquisition could still lead to $100K+ in year 1 deductions depending on the specifics of your deal.

An investor who is buying the duplex next to mine wants to trade a duplex he owns in a neighborhood nearby so he can have 2 duplexes next to each other (long story no need for those details). 

I still find this hard to believe. 95% of would be real estate investors never buy a single house.

I'm from Tampa Florida and I have a few clients that leveraged their portfolio to buy new properties.  

Investment Info:Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

Investment Info:Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Reason is a Heloc generally carries a higher rate on a shorter term and "Can Never" be used as an "Asset, or for PITI reserves" which are both required when you buy an investment property. 

If you wanted to do a 1031 exchange down the road to use that equity and trade up then that'd be a good idea.The homes I’m looking at buying are in the 330,000-350,000 range.

Learn by experience and making mistakes.One issue is most people who buying coaching only buy one program or max 2, so it's pretty hard to rank them.If you are convinced this is what you want to do, I'd look at Lifestyles, Total Wealth Academy and Brad Sumrok's programs. 

The point is that most of the books and gurus out there will sell you the dream and get you hooked on buying into their programs without giving you all the nitty gritty details.You're running a business and must treat it that way.