It’s impressive that you managed to keep your monthly expenses relatively low while securing a strong rent of $4,500.Your background as a Realtor and the benefits you leveraged as a veteran clearly gave you an edge.

Ken, You're changing the subject to something neither of us ever discussed.The only thing you claimed was that having no-debt on a SFR property makes no sense, because of your theory that the government is going to be massively raising taxes on property owners to "oppressive" levels.

However will that help influence SFH or Luxury MFs in lets say the hill section to appreciate to the levels of 2k a month?

If you are not finding good deals money wont find you.If you earn a decent wage and are credit worthy you can start investing by house hacking a multi family with a low down payment mortgage.If you have no money or credit your best best is start finding deals and bringing them to other investors who have money.

One of the biggest mistakes newer investors make is over-rehabbing houses and spending too much money on these low ARV homes.

But appreciation in Detroit has been next to none over the last several years, and with entry level prices being under 100k it presents a real opportunity for investors!

IE - when you're young and poor (low tax bracket), contribute as much as you can to a Roth. 

As there are Californians still moving here, the vast majority are instead picking the states with low or no state income tax like Texas, Florida, or Tennessee.Although we still have a positive influx of people moving here, more people have been leaving due to rising housing costs in recent years.To put it in perspective, we saw around +45k in the 2010's.Overall, CO is basically a balanced net migration in recent years which is likely to keep home prices steady....

- Given your experience level, without an inspection, I'd turn around and walk away.

Quote from @James Wise:I need to dig up a podcast that I listened to about 2 months ago with Tom Ferry, and the person was giving all the states, You are pretty close to that number on 5 days or more.. 95% range, the industry is very off kilter these days with the low activity of 2023 and 2024 that most people licensed just retired, gave up, or thought they were going to do something and never could get a sale due to bad leadership.