If you can refinance out of your VA that is great... but you will need at least 20% down if you don't want to live there for another year after the refinance.That's why I would recommend educating yourself, pinching your pennies, and making sure you have that 3% to 5% down payment for house number 2.

This would allow me to still invest in real estate as well as numerous other areas while doing it all within a tax-advantaged account, likely with more liquidity and the ability to withdraw my initial contributions without being penalized if I ever found myself in a pinch.

Those with small margins and those who have a high preferred return on Class A and luxury apartments may feel a pinch.

I can agree to payment plans with all my tenants except those that drive diesel cars, believe the earth is flat, or think dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate.

BTW, Boston Creme--chocolate dipped, if you please. 

While learning, I would be pinching pennies and trying to figure out how to save up enough for a downpayment in your market.

@Anthony Pisciotta and as has been mentioned, being able to handle your PITI is one thing, but you will likely have repairs and/or capex that come up that you are putting yourself in a worse position by doing rent reductions.Thankfully, there do seem to be various charities and government subsidies currently available or coming soon to help those that are in a pinch. 

This should come as a blessing to penny pinching landlords, there's ALOT of factory workers out of work now, so cheap labor is plentiful.

But I suspect some out there will be getting pinched very soon.

That's not a bad idea if you can get a landlord on board (and at this point, there are a lot of STR people who are feeling the pinch and are pretty panicked about what the future might hold for them).